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Ask the Designers of D&D Fourth Edition
This past August, big news dropped in the tabletop gaming community: 2008 would see the release of a fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Since then the official D&D Insider site, and communities like the excellent ENWorld, have been doing their best to keep us up to date on the ins and outs of the newest way to dungeon-delve. With the release just five months away, we've been given a chance to put some questions to the team developing the game. One question per post, if you would, and we'll make sure to pass the best questions on to the designers. Don't forget to ask about the online version of the D&D tools as well! We'll get their answers back to you as soon as we get them, so fire away.
Will this be the edition that finally sees the new "Escape Parents Basement" spell?
Will I need to have a paid subscription in order to download the PDFs of the 4th edition books that I buy?
Are there any girls there?
Sorry - this just hits too close to home (self-proclaimed geek).
More
I know at the moment there is only house rules for critical failures (i.e. rolling a 1 on a d20). Will there be set rules for this in 4.0?
Will the 4.0 version of D&D be compatible with the 25 or so 3.5 edition books I currently own? I would hate to think hate eberron would be out of date already.
3.5E had so many non-core sourcebooks that you could have easily respun and/or rebalanced the material into a new set of books if you had any need to sell more material (which you presumably do, as would anyone else in the same business). Based on what has been released and what I've read, 4E will be a radical departure of standards set back in 3E which were, in turn, meant to improve the game drastically.
Don't you think more work could have, and should have, been done to improve 3.5E? It seems like you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Will 4th edition use the same or similar systems for miniatures? Will a medium creature still fit in a 5' x 5' square? A friend of mine has a large collection of minatures and a decent sized third party map, and I am just hoping we do not have to move onto something else in order to satisfy the new rules...
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
Will d&d 4th, require a person to confirm critical hits, or will a mace
in the face be a mace in the face? (that is will a 20 be a critical hit)
1. Cannot base characters off the Ash from the Evil Dead movies.
2. A one man band is not an appropriate bard instrument.
3. There is no Dwarven god of heavy artillery.
4. My 7th Sea character Boudreaux is not the 'Southern' Montaigne.
5. Not allowed to blow all my skill points on 1pt professional skills.
6. Synchronized panicking is not a proper battle plan.
7. Nor is "Kill them all and let God sort them out"
8. Not allowed to use psychic powers to do the dishes.
9. How to serve Dragons is not a cookbook.
10. My monk's lips must be in sync.
11. Just because my character and I can speak German, doesn't mean the GM can.
13. Not allowed to berserk for the hell of it, especially during royal masquerades.
13. Must learn at least one offensive or defensive spell if I'm the sorcerer.
14. Must not murder canon NPCs in their sleep, no matter how cliche they are.
15. Ogres are not kosher.
16. Plan B is not automatically twice as much explosives as Plan A.
17. I will not beat Tomb of Horrors in less than 10 minutes from memory.
18. Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.
19. When surrendering I am to hand the sword over HILT first.
20. Drow are not good eating.
21. Polka is not appropriate marching music.
22. No longer allowed to recreate the Death Star Trench Run out of genre.
23. There is no such thing as a Gnomish Pygmy War Rhino.
24. Any character who has a sensitivity training center named after him will be taken away.
25. Even if the rules allow it, I am not allowed to summon 50,000 Blue Whales.
26. The green elf does not need food badly.
27. Valley speak has no place in a fantasy setting. Especially if you're the paladin.
28. I am not to shoot every corpse in the head to make sure they aren't a zombie in Twilight 2000.
29. The Goddess' of Marriage chosen weapon is not the whip.
30. I cannot have any gun that requires me to continue the damage code on back.
31. I am not to kill off all the vampires in the LARP, even if they are terminally stupid.
32. The backup trap handler is not whoever has the most HP at the time.
33. I cannot buy any animal in groups of 100 or over.
34. There is no such skill as 'improvised cooking'
35. I am not allowed to base any Droid off any character played by Joe Pesci.
36. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to play R2 units.
37. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to sit on the same side of the table.
38. They do not make black market illegal cyberweapons for rodents.
39. When investigating evil cultists not allowed to just torch the decrepit mansion from the outside.
40. Dwarves do not have the racial ability 'can lick their eyebrows'
41. Dwarves do not have the racial ability to hold their breath for 10 minutes.
42. Dwarves do not have the racial ability 'impromptu kickstand'
43. Having a big nose adds nothing to my seduction check.
44. No longer allowed to set nazi propaganda music to a snappy disco beat.
45. Not allowed to spend all 100 character points on 100 1pt skills.
46. My character names are not allowed to be double entendres.
47. Sliver rhymes with silver because the computer frelling says so.
48. They do not make Nair in wookie sizes.
49. The elf is restricted to decaf for the rest of the adventure.
50. Not allowed to blow up the Death Star before that snotty farm kid gets his shot.
51. Not allowed to use thermodynamic science to asphyxiate the orcs' cave instead of exploring it first.
52. No longer allowed to use the time machine for booty calls.
53. My bard does not know how to play Inna Godda Davida on marachas.
54. Not allowed to start a drow character weighing more than a quarter ton.
55. Cannot pimp out other party members.
56. Before facing the dragon, not allowed to glaze the elf.
57. No matter how well I roll, a squirrel cannot carry a horse and rider at full sprint.
58. In the middle of a black op I cannot ask a guard to validate parking.
59. Expended ammun
First off, thank you for no more Gnomes as a basic race (or so is the rumor)
What exactly is happening to the wizard class? It sounds like it's becoming more like the Warlock and gaining spell casting like the CHA based casters or spell like abilities based on memorized spells? Are you able to expand on this or give us more information yet?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
It appears (to me, at least), that many of the new rules-changes mirror popular MMO's like WOW. How much influence do the designers derive from video games; and, to the extent that D&D 4th resembles WOW, is this a conscious effort to reach the MMO-generation of gamers with table-top role-play?
How do you feel you've struck a balance between a desire to simplify/streamline rules to speed play and make the game more accessible, and a desire to preserve the strategy and general goodness of the game as it exists today? Details about proposed changes that were a tough call either way would be interesting.
Why is there a need for a 4th edition? 3.5 wasn't released all that long ago (and the books were just as expensive as the 3.0 versions), so why do we need a 4.0? Is there a compelling reason or is this just a symptom of Hasbro casting "Animate Dead" on TSR's corpse?
Regards, Ian
It seems to me that the fun of table-top Role Playing Games is the storytelling. It's the plots, and the character development, and the mythical settings that make RPGs so exciting. Do we really need to further refine the game rules, or is this a simple cash grab for the publisher, when all the gamers out there update to the new rules?
I know that some of the old settings (Ravenloft, Spelljammers, Dark Sun, Planescape) have been transitioned to other companies or have been quietly kept alive by their fans with knowledge bases and efforts at rules translations between old rulesets and 3.5. Will any of these old, orphaned settings being making a comeback in 4.0? (Planescape. Please, Planescape!) If not, are the 4.0 rules being written to make these on-going translation efforts easier?
Short intro, I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. Play a lot of computer games. Enjoy reading up on lore and the like.
... well, the general populace. What are you doing to break free of this? Or do you embrace it? What are your thoughts & opinions on this strange negative publicity that popular movies push onto D&D players? Do you ever try to break free of that?
But I never got into D&D. I had friends that played it but I was never into it. I tried playing it a few times and had some fun experiences. But there's always been a sort of negative stigma associated with it among
My work here is dung.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It sounds like, in an effort to balance classes better, they've all become a lot more alike. That is, a wizard and a warrior will have a very different list of abilities, but they'll all have X abilities to use at will, X abilities to use once an encounter, and so on. Do you feel this is a fair assessment? If so, is there any concern that in making the classes more alike you'll have essentially created one well-balanced class that no one wants to play? In 3E, a lot of the classes require very different kinds of strategy and in my experience all players have different favorites for reasons that seem to be going away.
It upset quite a few folks when D&D 3.0E transitioned to 3.5E relatively soon after release, and made some people's investments in D&D become basically worthless overnight. While I appreciate that it's sometimes time to spawn a new edition that's incompatible with the old, it felt like 3.5E should have been an errata to 3.0E, rather than a totally new set of books.
I understand that WotC can't commit itself to any firm "we will not release another edition for X years" guarantee, but it would be nice to hear some sort of assurance that we won't see a repeat of the 3.0E->3.5E debacle. What's the plan? What lessons have you learned?
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
With D&D 3rd Edition, we were introduced to the D20 System and the Open Gaming License, which allowed third party publishers to produce supplements for the game. Will there be something akin to this for 4th Edition? What form will it take, and will it be more or less restrictive?
Has there been any thoughts or discussions on reducing the amount of books needed to play? Donating a bookshelf to every new edition is getting a little ridiculous for the casual gamer. I have 40+ books from first and second edition. I bought the Player's Handbook from the third edition, read the first thirty pages and went "bleh".
To reference another gaming system, I can generate a character in GURPS (Steve Jackson Games) in under an hour, have a little better feel for advantages and disadvantages, arm and clothe the character, and do it all from one book. Now there are other books available, but not necessary. Also, their magic system seems a lot more reasonable than memorizing spells. I always thought of spells more like skills than chunks of memory.
I know it goes against the business model, but can you actually make a game that can be played with less than four books?
Fast, cheap, correct. You get to pick two.
I haven't gone through the changes to 4e yet but I found that in 3.5 we were spending a lot of time searching for modifiers for our rolls. Is there a shift from this to where the role playing will start making a more concrete difference in survival and the adventures or is it still up to the DM to make sure this happens? My last 2 DMs were excellent in this aspect but with more definitive rules and information about this it would make ALL the players role play more.
As opposed to the foursome of Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard thats been standard since the seventies? Yes, as opposed to. Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard obviously inspired Tank, DPS, Healer and Blaster, but MMOs have twisted the roles away from the original classes. To whit: Rogues are now the de Facto DPS class. In olden days, Rogues had backstab, sure, but they were never the primary damage dealers. They were stealthy pickpocketing thieves.
4e? Rogues are now the primary DPS class.
Wizards Presents: Races and Classes (a 4e preview), makes it explicit.
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13546.phtml
To quote the author of that review:
"These are new specific "jobs" in an adventuring party that they designed for. They are defender, striker, controller, and leader. The defender is a typical MMORPG tank, with high defenses and abilities to cause foes to focus on him. The striker is a one-on-one damage dealer. The controller is oddly named - this covers damaging or affecting multiple targets (like with a Fireball). The leader heals, aids, and buffs."
If 4e was returning to roots, they'd have four classes and that's it. Instead, they're giving us four roles that are MMO-inspired and layering lots more than four classes atop those roles. That's not anything like D&D used to be.
this is the `we're not making enough money' edition, right?
Seriously. 3rd, and then 3.5, and now 4th edition, all within what, six years?? and how long did 2nd last?
there's nothing wrong with the game as it plays, now, that a couple of house rules cant fix.
another `lets make everything from the last version completely obsolete' version is NOT going to sit well with a lot of players.
I paid all that money for 2nd edition books, and actually got my moneys worth. I had them for more than 10 years.
I held off on buying 3rd edition, because I was still happy with 2nd, and by the time I was ready to buy, 3.5 had been released, so that's what I bought.
considering how much I paid for all of these books, and how many 3.5 books I've purchased, I wont consider myself to have gotten my moneys worth from them until at LEAST 2012. So as far as I can tell, 4th edition is at LEAST 4 years too early. so I doubt that I'll be buying or playing 4th edition for a while.
So, really, My question is: Did you actually come up with something so completely new that it makes a new edition essential, or is this just a move by WOC to squeeze as much money out of the AD&D franchise as possible?
The game is only as fun as the people you play with.
I'm feeling pretty cynical about their reasons for doing this, too. The things I read about the new rules, up until I finally stopped reading in disgust, all seemed like a dumbening of the rules to appeal to attention span-challenged video gamers.
Currently, at higher levels, a fight between the party and a group of enemies can easily last a couple of hours.
How has combat been streamlined?
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
One of the things I dislike about 3rd edition is that at medium and high levels magic items are such a big part of a character's power. A PC has to be decorated like a Christmas tree with various magical doodads in order to be effective. Running a campaign in a world where magic items are rare or nonexistant required a lot of house rules and adjustment on the part of the DM. Will it be easier to run a low or no magic item campaign in 4e?
Pardom me if this mini-rant-around-a-question goes long. I started playing D&D (the basic boxed set) and AD&D ages ago--first on 1st Ed. rules and eventually ponying up for 2nd Ed. My friends and I liked the game because it was easy and simple (regarding game mechanics) in the first edition, and we did enjoy some of the changes going into 2nd E. (though we did opt to keep the original Ranger class, as our gaming world was very Norse and giant-heavy). For those of us who wanted games with more realistic (if you can use that term for a Fantasy RPG) combat mechanics, different skill allocation methods, and other detailed tables, we had RuneQuest, Palladium, and dozens of other options. The game was well-established, and players could be found anywhere.
With the arrival of the 3rd Ed. rules, you lost me as a regular player, along with many of my peers (we may be a bit older now, but we are the ones with regular salaries and a desire to continue the delusion of ongoing youth by purchasing simple amusements like games). I had no desire to relearn a gaming system that, for the most part, had its rules embedded in my head. The 3.5 Ed.? Didn't even pay attention. Fourth edition? Sorry, but not interested.
My own sons are old enough to play now. I've been shopping around for some of the early 1st and 2nd Ed. books so my kids and I may try out the game together, but until that happens, we bide our time playing Guild Wars (online) and Magic: The Gathering (offline).
My question is this: who are you trying to please? Do you have a core group of early gamers who will buy anything AD&D just because you print it? Are you attracting any younger gamers to the fold? If not, what's the point in publishing release after release after release? It's as bad as auto makers manufacturing '08 vehicles that are effectively the same as the '07s (Oh!, but the door for the gas cap is now square!).
The question I'm asking beneath the surface is, "Why should I care at all?" Unless the rules are relatively simple--something that won't require me to buy an entire library of books--you won't win me back. Once upon a time, only three books were needed for hours (months, and years) of fun: the DM handbook, the Player's handbook, and a Monster Manual (and the creative DM could get by without the MM). In all honesty, it looks like you are using the glorious history of (perhaps) the most storied RPG franchise of our time and using only as a perpetual money maker for your company. The more I hear about subsequent editions, the more I get the impression that you don't give a crap about the players out there (the people who made the game great in the first place), and that you simply wonder how much more you can squeeze the golden goose before it dies.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Actually, I have a formal question for the developers: Have you ever read Monte Cook's Iron Heroes supplement and are there any similarities?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I am slightly concerned by the rendering of monsters into simply combat stats. Please take this opportunity to allay my fears, as much of what I hear, I approve of. Will there be more to monsters than combat? Obviously, that's their most important role, but an understanding of their capabilities outside of combat (rituals they can cast, things they know - stuff that they WON'T use in a fight against PCs) is important to give a monster an ecology, purpose, traction - to use a popular word. Please explain to me how 4e takes account of this, or if it doesn't, explain why you have designed it thusly. (Oh, and thanks for your time and effort. It can't be easy redesigning D&D, what with the internet and all.)
We know that you are providing a tool for editing character sheets on your computer, although you have not specified anything else. An editable PDF sheet seems likely. However, there have been many popular tools (e.g. PCGen) that can update many aspects of data automatically based on game events, rather than numbers. Example: You are the target of eagle's grace (assuming it still exists and has the same function). You have a +2 cloak of Charisma (once again making assumptions). You simply enter the fact that you are affected by that spell and tool automatically increases your Charisma score by 2, and also makes all relevant modifications elsewhere (save DCs, skill modifiers, etc.) Will the suite of digital tools released with 4th Edition include a tool that can maintain a character sheet that can be updated based on effects and modifications, rather than simple numeric input? If so, will it be extensible with published supplements/user-provided data?
In 3.5 and even basic 3d ed, Priests were far and away more useful than wizards and sorcers. They had damage spells, could use better weapons out of the box and had a serious of buffs, combined with their armor, that made them powerful and extremely difficult to kill. At very high levels, a powerful wizard can deal great damage with delayed blast fireball and whatnot, but at that point a good cleric can throw down greater aspect of the diety, divine power and a load of other spells and turn themselves into a combat machine, plus the ability to heal and a few good damage spells.
How are you going to balance the two main spellcasting types in 4th ed? Or are you going to leave things generally as they are?
One of the things that always seemed out of place for me was the use of Hit Points. As any humanoid became higher level (i.e.: gained power) somehow they received a commensurate increase in physical ability to withstand a blow from something like a longsword. This issue was resolved in Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds where the whole idea of HP was replaced with a saving throw against damage. Did the D&D4 designers consider this as an option to replace the age-old (and some say broken) mechanic that is HP? And if so, why did they choose to remain with HP over the M&M mechanic?
> Which multi sided dice do I have to roll
Multi-sided dice? No, in the next edition they're moving to single-sided dice. 1 is a critical hit, while 1 is a critical miss. 1 is success, and 1 is failure. There won't be much room for rules lawyers to maneuver.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
In a related vein, I'm still not sure who the target audience may be.
I'm haven't been a regular D&D player for a few decades but I am involved in a RPG community which is largely centered around 3.5 and DDM. The response there has been almost unilaterally one of revulsion.
After much discussion, most reasonable theory that we have come up with is that the current target market is new players - the ever-popular WoW crowd - for whom the purchase of new books is an addition, rather than a replacement with the assumption that a significant percentage of regulars will fall in line, despite their grumbling, out of a desire to stay "official." The video ad campaigns seem to reinforce this belief with the persistent, nagging mockery of the existing player base. The developer's comments are consistently spun to point out the many failings of 3rd Edition as well.
So, with that being said, are you relying primarily upon the 3E crowd to swallow their pride and accept that you've convinced them to pay for and playtest your inferior system in order to pave the way for your new, vastly superior revision again? What, if any, steps are being taken to address isolation and resentment amongst the current customers or is the primary focus entirely upon attracting new players and recreating the same level of devotion from scratch?
I have two questions:
1) I played and ran second edition about 10 years ago with a bunch of high school friends. I started to play third edition but school took over and I gradually loss interest. My friends however did not. They started to become more involved with the D&D community via live-action, joining several official player organizations, playing in sanctioned games, cross-country adventures to the mecca that is GENCON, as well as buying a plethora of 3rd edition material. Given the complexities (depth) of 3rd edition (as noted by several posts), I feel a little overwhelmed and that I don't have the "background" to really engage with them when 4th edition comes out. I was wondering how will you make 4th edition more accessible to casual and/or new gamers? Will I be able to pick up just the core books and generate a player-character that is on the level with experienced 3rd edition players? Will I need to go back and read 3rd edition supplements to better understand the world of 4th edition?
2) I was wondering if the D&D Tools leverage social networking platforms like Facebook and MySpace (OpenSocial)? I have always thought that the real popularity behind D&D (maybe all classical RPGs) is that a game session becomes a loosely structured social event for friends to communicate, share ideas, and just well, catch up (with a wee bit of hacking and slashing). More to the point, the number of online gamers and D&D fans probably constitutes a gigantic social network in itself. Do you guys intend to create some of the social networking dynamics of online sites like Facebook or something entirely different?
My first module as a player, and then as a DM, was Monte Cook's excellent Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. The thing is huge and complicated, with an enormous volcanic crater mapped out and populated by lots of NPC's who are -- sort of -- cooperating. Rather than giving detailed descriptions of what these NPC's will do, whether out of combat or in, the module simply gives their statistics and explains their personalities, and lets the DM figure out what they do. There were very few notes about combat tactics other than those that relate to personality ("Imix enjoys whacking things with his greatsword and makes little use of his spell-like abilities"), since it's assumed that the DM is smart enough to come up with tactics on his own.
... almost pre-scripted. There's a separate section of the book for encounters, in which separate maps are given just of the "encounter area", with all the NPC's placed on it and combat tactics given for them. So you get "Encounter K42: Wight ambush", with a separate map with a bunch of wights on it. I've not run this module, but it seems like DM'ing it is more of an exercise in executing a pre-written script rather than being creative. There's not much room in there for flexibility, either -- it'd require a bunch of rewriting just to get the NPC information in a format conducive to being flexible with it.
While NPC's are given locations, there's a note: "The placement of NPC's in, and the description of, the mines is just a snapshot at one point in time. They move around, do stuff, raid each other, etc., as time passes, and it's important to keep the place dynamic." The module encourages a huge amount of flexibility.
This was wonderful to DM, and the players enjoyed the feeling of being in such an active environment.
Now, look at a more recent module, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. The setting is wonderful, the maps are wonderful, but all the encounters are
In short: Wonderful setting (not written anew, swiped from 1e), uninspired writing. Writing is targeted to the lowest common denominator of DM's who can't figure out how to run NPC's/set up encounters on their own.
I hear Expedition to the Demonweb Pits is supposed to be pretty good, but haven't heard anything good about any of the other modern writing.
My question is this: Are the modules written for 4e, and the overall design generally, going to lean more on the side of accessibility to less creative players/DM's or the side of giving more experienced players/DM's more flexibility?
Can you publish an edition that likens back to 1st Edition AD&D where four books and a module pretty much could sum up a session? How about putting more energy into fleshing out a world instead of bloating the ruleset or creating more classes? Well designed modules/worldbooks will still generate the revenue that you are trying to force out of your clients with more core books.
The magic of AD&D (whether it be high, dark, monty haul, hack-n-slash, dungeoncrawling, or comic) is in the minds of the players....the world they mold around their characters. Then again....most gaming companies today don't really care about this. WotC, Whizkids, Games Workshop....they're all about the $$ and number of units sold.
I always wanted to play games that were heroic. We've always had a standing rule in our campaigns of no evil characters. So I have to wonder, what's with all of the devil and demon based races and power sources and where are all of the good angelic based power sources? It seems as if the 4th edition rules have been swallowed by the "Evil is Cool" paradigm, which I have to say is incredibly sad to me(this was a big pet peeve of mine in Unearthed Arcana where there was a Tiefling but no Aasimar paragon class). In 3.5 all of the base classes and races were relatively neutral with a bit of a flavor for good. Why suddenly move to the "Evil is Cool" route in a game that historically and for the most part has been about epic struggles of good and neutral against an encompassing evil?
ne of the key issues I have had with previous editions of D&D is that even with all the customizing options, all the magic using characters are still very defined by the list of spells in the player's handbook. Since magic is such a defining part of a world, that means that the PHB spellbook is often a very intrusive influence on the character of the world.
Will 4th edition have a good system for customizing magic to the DM's world, or will DMs still essentially have to adapt their world to the magic system?
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
During the 3.x timeframe, you introduced OGL, the Open Gaming License, a reasonably good share-alike compromise for the game system.
Alongside that, you published the System Reference Document (SRD) which contained most of the monsters and equipment from the core books and almost all of the rules. It made an excellent standard for spinning off games and creating publishable material based on a canon.
And yet, at the same that Creative Commons license gaining ground, and YouTube and other crowd-publishing sites (like Gleemax?) are looming massively over the entertainment playground, I hear the rumour that OGL and the SRD are going away!
What is Wizards really going to do to promote community publishing? Those of us creating content for the game, content that promotes the game, are waiting to hear that we'll have a green light, that we can publish our material freely for all to use without fear of The Lawyers, and that we can incorporate Wizards' canon material in those publications in a non-competitive way. Will we be given that license? Or will there be, as the rumor told it, licensing fees to keep out content creators?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
when WOTC created 3rd edition, they killed a number of sacred cows--and that's a great thing, if you ask me.
as a fan of the star wars saga game, i certainly see much there that very clearly looks like it's gonna be part of D&D4, such as the second wind mechanic, the d20 modern-inspired alternating feat/talent slots at each level. but what i found most mechanically intriguing in the saga game was the usage of the use the force skill. as an amateur rules tinkerer myself, i was actually working on a variant of the first d20 SW game that would have done the same, but upon learning that you were going in this direction, figured there was no point on continuing.
so the question i have: does the force mechanic as presented in SW saga relate in any meaningful way to the way magic will work in D&D4? there's been what looks like signs of dissatisfaction with the vancian model that arneson & gygax first introduced in comments i've seen here or there for a while.
ed
I have seen a lot of questions being posted here that have either been answered and archived at ENWorld.com or are not relevant to 4e as the system is getting a major overhaul, this is not a 2e shift to 3e, its far more radical than that... Link:
http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e
The WotC website has some info as well (will require a Digital Initiative free sign-up to view) here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/welcome
If you want to hazard the nascent WotC forums and blogs @ Gleemax.com there are blogs by developers and they occasionally reply to 4e threads there. Link (uses same DI login from main site above):
http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Login/Default/default.aspx
Warning: WotC is trying to reinvent the wheel and this site is "Alpha," so be prepared for some frustration navigating around it.
For a consolidated list of developer blogs, link here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/community
And for the proto-blogs on the old forum system they used during and after GenCon before the Gleemax blog system:
http://forums.gleemax.com/forumdisplay.php?f=684
In Service,
~~Saracenus
Real Daleks do not climb stairs, they level the building instead.
I'd really like to see a better spell system, which allows much more flexibility, within certain rules.
I mean, the current magic system in most table-top RPGs is basically a set of pre-set actions: "lightning ball, 30' radius", "light candle without taking match from pocket". Might as well have a DM's story telling system that has options like "tell your players they've entered a "big room'" "tell your player to stop bitchslapping the orc".
What we really need is a system more like "you have 30 mana points" You know how to: "commanding stone; requires 5 points per kilogram per second" "apply the move command: takes 15 points per second" "apply the levitation command: 40 points per second" "apply dazzling special effects to your spell: 10 points per second, per cubic metre".
Then, you could be creative and say, "OK, then I'm going to dazzle this crowd by moving that ancient statue through the air to here..."
Of course, the DM would then reply "with no, sorry, you're not powerful enough", whereupon you'd get your ass kicked by the crowd.
No recursing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I (according to the moderators) may have just become the first man to successfully troll himself.
Whenever I hear anything about the upcoming 4th edition, the only comparisons I ever hear are comparisons to previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons.
There are a lot of other roleplaying games in the market these days: the availability of print-on-demand has given rise to a new generation of "indy" games like Spirit of the Century, Reign, Primetime Adventures, and so forth. Even ignoring these, there are all kinds of other competitors in the marketplace: Exalted, World of Darkness, GURPS, etc.
For someone who moved away from D&D to other game systems, I can't help but feel that discussion and marketing of 4th edition is curiously blind to the existence and advances made by all these other systems.
Why should I choose to play D&D 4th edition instead of one of the other games? What, in short, are your relative competitive advantages when I am deciding what system to use for a new campaign?
I followed the development of D&D 3.0 and there was a very extensive playtest process that involved many groups all over the country (perhaps the world) over a period of many months. The list of playtester credits in the back of the 3.0 Players' Handbook is huge (and I have friends whose names appear there).
Is the playtesting for 4E being done on a comparable scale and if not, how can we as players be confident the new edition will have the same or better quality?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
For those hearkening for the good old days of first edition AD&D, check out OSRIC, a free PDF that uses the same rules as 1e but puts them into new words. (Evidently, you can copyright words but not the math behind a gaming system.) They did a good job.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Luckily, WotC were nice enough to license 1E rules to Kenzerco, who amped up that 1E spirit in their outstanding game system Hackmaster. It's what I play now. Hackmaster even preserves the 1E aesthetics, instead of making everything look awesome-to-12-year-olds. (Interestingly, I've found that players who didn't play 1E and went straight to Hackmaster tend to undervalue the roleplaying and overdo the "hack" stuff - but for you, it might be just the right thing.)
As a DM, I find myself constantly limiting my modules (self created) so to make sure the players will not run out of spells or run so low on hit points that they decide to camp for the night (and thus end the adventure early). This puts a burden on a lot of DM's, where we have to carefully watch our CR and maybe even fib (I admit to it) on the hit points remaining on some monsters (or remove the monsters entirely) because we see that we have either overwhelmed the players or they are saving their "good" spells for the boss at the end or just in case. I would love to be able to let them fight their way to the boss only to discover that after they defeat the boss, they have to now fight their way back out, or maybe the boss runs when low on health and the players must then fight their way to another location to face him again. Currently the only way to do this is to camp "real quick like", but that destroys the reality of the world as whole would actually camp in the middle of a haunted gnoll cave, when gnolls are just behind the next door? Plus, no real time passes, so the overall reality is lost even more!
How about allowing players to either have a recast timer or I might even suggest to get as drastic as giving them a "mana pool" to cast from which can regenerate over time while resting or some other way. I would love my players to have animate rope handy ready when we happen to be using rope, but nobody brings it to the adventures because the other spells are just too valuable. In reality, limiting spell selection does add strategy, but at the cost of adventure and paths that will not be taken because they do not have that "worthless" spell ready to go (yes, my players call many spells worthless because they never know whether to bring them, so they all load up on healing and damage spells because they know they will need them. In addition, all my players save up their spells, sometimes not even using them because of the one and done reality of the game. If they knew they could get it back and maybe cast it again, they might be a bit more willing to let the magic fly when based with a smaller foe. Sure, make it a penalty, either in a device which costs gold or with having to wait X about of minutes in real time. You could even only allow some spells to be recast, but not all (two classes of spells, reusable and rest based) Yes, it will unbalance the classes, but a fighter can keep swinging until he has no more hit points left; a mage may be done after 6 spell casts. I doubt any melee class will complain about extra heals and more adventure.
Something similar was tried in DnD Online, but who is going to put rest stones in the middle of a dungeon? You have this nice little opportunity to make the adventures epic and furious with an increased pace and lets face it, but we are growing impatient these days...we want to get to the good part.
Keep the action going I say, we all crave more adventure.....give it to us. Which brings me to my question: Will any of the above be solved in the 4th Edition and if not, why not?
Will 4th Ed finally have an integral mass combat system for wars? If so, could you tell us a little bit about it?
--Somebody infect me with a
Many people are acting as if a new edition will not only obsolete their old books, it will actually prevent them from accessing the ruleset at all. Level-headed people of course regard that as silly, nobody's going to sneak into your house and burn your old books!
However, with more and more importance being placed on digital content (not specifically Wizards of the Coast, but in general), if the wrong decision is made regarding DRM, that nightmare scenario may actually take place if WotC stops supporting this edition.
Will WotC spend a lot of time and money in vain in adding restrictions that will only serve to frustrate legitimate customers, restrictions that pirates will figure out how to bypass within a week of release, if not sooner?
Is the issue of whether to DRM or not, and why and how being treated very seriously within the company?
Will the digital tools be available for Linux / Mac users?
My biggest concern is the availability of the digital tools in non-Windows environments. That's about the only thing that could sour the whole deal for me. I'm hoping they're web-based or Java-based so they can run on any operating system.
What you are thinking of is my new role playing game called 'Möbius'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Pardon me if I'm wrong, but fighters are meatbags in these games. The higher level they get, the wimpier they get relative to the monsters.
Hence in a sense, yes, they do get more fumble-fingered. "I walk up to the necro wearing cloth armor and doing such delicate finger movements that he cannot even wear leather and swing my massive sword."
DM: He dodges easily, while continuing the finger motions that are so delicate he cannot even wear leather.
Whatever.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Has there been any discussion about moving from the D20 system and the inherent flat probability distribution of rolls to a multi die system? This aspect of the D20 system has led me to avoid playing D&D after having played in systems (White wolf, ShadowRun, EarthDawn and GURPS) where character capabilities are somewhat more predictable; and bonuses are more effective at the margin than for unlikely rolls.
Spyder