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D&D 4th Edition Details Released
Wired is reporting that some juicy details of Wizards of the Coast's new 4th edition for Dungeons and Dragons are being leaked on to the web from the D&D Experience in Arlington, VA this week. "Wizards of the Coast, the current custodians of the D&D universe, have been talking about the upcoming fourth edition of the game for months, but they've been fairly cagey about hard details, preferring to tell us more about how elves love footraces than how much damage a fireball does. They're running actual 4e games at D&D Experience, though, and thanks to people with scanners, you can too!"
I'm playing what amounts to a beta release of a pen and paper rpg... It's official. I will never get laid.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Apart from, you know, 2nd Edition was a brutal hack-job created as an interim measure only to deprive Gary Gygax of royalties. 2E was riddled with terrible rules (THAC0 being one of the more benign terrible rules). I don't know if you're only looking back on 2E nostalgically or if you've just never run a 3/3.5E campaign before, but the newer rulesets are much much much better. The supplements, however, are not. They don't even try to balance things like Psionics, and creating a character using the book Savage Species is a pretty quick way to create an overpowered character. My suggestion to you is to avoid both of these things, and also to get a better DM because 3E, properly run, should be quite a bit harder (or at least more tactical).
D&D? Seriously? What are you, a bunch of geeks? Now, Hackmaster.. THERE's a game!
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
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
Oh, man...I put on my robe and wizard hat.
I think 4E is more like OSX: It's just as powerful as any other rule set, but everything is hidden from the end user. The equipment is also going to be extremely expensive.