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Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Launches
darkwing_bmf writes "Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition rulebooks are now available. There's a review up at EuroGamer. Unfortunately, the online tools portion, D&D Insider, isn't ready yet."
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Not I. My girlfriend plays DnD with me. Although, she doesn't think pretending to be a wizard with a "Sexuality Wand" +3 is too exciting in bed...
While a generation of boys in their twenties and thirties continue to lose out on the opportunity to get laid...
:(
The laws of probability forbid it!
Cue bash.org quote in 3..2..1..
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
TFA isn't a review: it's an expanded press release.
There's nothing about any of the mechanics of how the game plays, except that it's supposedly easier for newbs and balanced at all levels.
So in summary, there are...
1. New books!
2. New art!
3. Online tools!
Shouldn't it really be called dUng30nz & Dr4g0|\|Z 47h 3d1T1oN? OMGBBQ!!!!!11one11
I mean, I remember complaining bitterly about T$R when I was a kid. Since being acquired by Hasbro, D&D has fallen much further than TSR ever could have caused it to.
3.0 was pretty bad. Real fixes didn't come until 3.5, which wasn't released all that long ago, and now, before people have gotten their moneysworth out of 3.5, we have 4.0.
Worse, 4.0 has lots of things missing and they'll be conveniently added in the "expansions" for the 4.0 PHB and DMG.
What a load of crap.
Regards, Ian
New alignment system: Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil.
um, no.
I would have respected the choice to get rid of alignment, but this is a boneheaded move. The problem with alignment (with bad role players anyway) is that it reinforces trite stereotypes. This just gives you fewer trite stereotypes to choose from.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
I've been following the /. news articles passively about the new D&D 4th ed.
But I have to ask: What is exactly news/newsworthy of this? After skimming TFA I have noticed it only seems to introduce new classes/characters/spells. Nothing about new gameplay changing rules, so isn't this just technically an expansion? Someone please tell me what new rules this adds...
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
Considering that the average male's wand is +5 to +6, you should be able to see why she's not getting excited.
I can understand WotC wanting to release new material to milk us dry. However, I don't understand the online 'table'. Didn't they say that NWN would be something similar? It's one thing to make a pen and paper RPG. It's another to make a pen and paper MMORPG.
It is not a god that would do evil biddings, but only a mortal and its limited knowledge would let such atrocities exist
Yah, it's tough to roll a 20 each time you want to get laid.
I bet she really gets hot when you put on your robe and wizard hat
Does she at least make you take off your wizard Hat?
I really find it a bummer that WotC is testing D&D rules and system by coming out with a new edition of the Star Wars RPG. I'd be more into the Star Wars RPG, even D&D if they just found a system that worked and stuck with it. I miss D&D 2.0 and the West End SWRPG. = /
From what I've read so far, the main good things about 4th edition that I've seen so far are:
The main complaints I have so far is that they haven't released rules in the Monster Manual for creating your own monsters from scratch and figuring out appopriate levels, and the death penalty is really almost too minor. Raise dead still takes 10 minutes to cast, and the cost does go up as your level goes up, but the penalty is only -1 to all rolls until you rest for 6 hours. I appreciate that they were trying to lessen death effects and other affects that take your character effectively out of game (Medusa gaze, Illithid mind blast, etc), but by having such a minimal penalty for death, you'd have to wonder why any fears death.
Some will certainly complain that 4th edition is too MMO like (especially like WOW), but the new character building rules do admittedly enforce character balance quite well through all levels.
No, I didn't RTFA but...
WotC fumbled the ball with software AGAIN? Who woulda thunk it? After their very sophomoric attempt at software with the 3.0 PHG and that shame for sale that they passed off as DM Tools I can only wait to (not) sink my teeth into their next software offering.
I've personally written better software for the game on a TRS-80.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
DURING a DnD game?
That must have been awkward.
The Cleric is no longer a required party member, as everyone can self heal.
If you looked for a cleric only because he can heal it's no wonder you've seen the those that play the class as a burden instead of a party member. You're treating clerics like most corporations treat their IT departments and you know how most IT employees feel about their companies...
Oh well, just another reason for me to dismiss WotC as the destroyers of D&D.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think the book keeping is different, not less overall. There a lot of things to keep track of. Who is targeted? Who is moving back and forth, Has this person been push, pulled or slid?
The hit points level off as you get higher, and contrary to your statement, then CAN be killed in one shot. A lot less likely, but it is there.
My Rogue could do d6+8+2d8
I've read those rules, and the monster creation is pretty easy to do. Bear in mind, a monster is a Monster, not another character type.
It is clearly focused on minis, and the changes make it seem more MMO like, but I don't think that's a bad thing, just a thing. They seem to have implemented it well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thats a first level Rogue, BTW.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have to disagree. Alignment is a mattter of philosophy. Maybe it's just that I'm an optimist, but I'd have to say the majority of humanity is of the "Good" alignment in that they generally hold helping others to be at least equal to if not slightly above personal gain. I'd also argue that they by and large have Lawful tendencies, as otherwise organized society would not work. No, there are very few paragons of these alignments, but to claim *most* people don't favor Good over Evil or Law over Chaos is just silly. Whether or not you devote your life to fighting evil isnt' a matter of alignment, it's a matter of where you get your hit dice...
Note I say this as someone who is most decidedly NOT Lawful Good...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
That must have been awkward. No, his dwarf fighter had a really high stamina and strength score, so once he rolled well enough to seduce the elven wizard, the rolls he needed to screw her were pretty low.
I'm probably going to pass. A lot of the changes make it "not D&D" for me. It's like learning a completely new game system, like moving on to GURPS or Rolemaster or what have you. Everybody can heal themselves? That's not D&D, you're *supposed* to have a cleric (or a druid, or a bard, or a paladin, or potions) for healing. That's the whole point of the D&D flavor. You can cast magic missile infinite times per day? That's not D&D, you're *supposed* to have a limited number of zots for blasting. That's the whole point of the D&D flavor. Now, I'm not saying these are *bad* changes. I'm fully open to the idea that they may make the game flow better and so on. I'm just saying it's like moving on to a completely different game system. And I haven't been convinced why I should do that when I'm enjoying my 3.5 games highly.
The link in the summary that says "4th Edition rulebooks are now available", doesn't point to where I can go look at the 4th edition rules. The Wizards website still says that it's one day away. Could someone please post a link to where I can actually look at the new rules? Or are they not actually available yet?
Yes. Those boys will continue to be virgins. Continuing in the tradition of their fathers, and their father's fathers.
As amazing as it sounds, our gaming group, who has been meeting for about 20 years now, still use the AD&D 2.0 edition with the Skills & Powers expansion. Some of the same customization without the lethality and long battles of RoleMaster. Since we all have extensive libraries of these older 2nd edition books, the odds are not good that we'll migrate to YAEODD (Yet Another Edition Of Dungeons & Dragons).
I remember the WotC Slashdot questions regarding the release of the 4th edition. One of the questions was why we should bother to upgrade our libraries since D&D edition 5 is probably just around the corner? The answer was, and I'll paraphrase since I'm getting old, "Because it's just better." Great logic. I read that as "We need more money."
Of course, a lot of our group play World of Warcraft between games and from all indications, 4th edition is tabletop WoW.
This can't be.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Seriously, it seems like I have seen at least 3 or 4 other Slashdot articles saying "4th edition D&D released!".
Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of Penny-Arcade fame got together with Scott Kurtz of PvP and played D&D 4th Edition. The escapades were recorded and are being posted as Podcasts. You can subscribe to the podcasts at http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml or download the First and Second files directly.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
It kept things interesting, and made it difficult to play a character at times.
Eg, trying to be lawful when you need to bend the rules, or trying to balance things when true neutral.
But then again, within my group as we progressed from junior high to high school, we did less mindless hacking and slashing, and more role-playing.
make world, not war
I don't look at the cleric only because it can heal, but the reality is that in most 3.0-3.5 campaigns, the Cleric likely spends 50% or more of his spells on various forms of healing (either HP or ability damage/drain) because players are loath to use their healing potions outside of combat, even if they barely ever use them in combat because it provokes AoO.
The Cleric PC in the campaign I'm running even has the Touch of Healing feat (can basically heal PCs up to half HP for free) and still probably spends half or more of his spells on healing. In almost any campaign I've been in, the decision to rest is usually made because the Cleric is out of healing magic, or the wizard is >90% empty.
And suddenly, it was as if, a million geeks cried out in pain, and just as silently were silenced.
Wow, no really WoW, or World of Warcraft, I can't imagine a pen and paper game more well-dsigned to emulate a video game than this. Don't get me wrong, I love WoW, and haven't played D&D in many years, but I sincerely doubt I will ever play this edition. Damn You WotC, I defended you 8 years ago when people said you were video-gameifying D&D, and you do this, from what I can see, this is WoW in tabletop form, WoW is a lot of things, but it is no RPG, and sadly, neither is this new 4th edition of D&D. Thankfully, Dear old Gary is not here to witness this dishonoring of his memory, surely he is rolling over in his grave.
Who else thinks the 'unaligned' alignment is the new Chaotic Neutral, only worse ("I can do anything, I'm not bound by rules, or ethics or morals, YAY!")?
I can only hope that this new edition does far worse than the last forcing Hasbro to shutter WotC to spare us another insipid edition that only further tarnishes the name Dungeons & Dragons.
I never thought I would say this, but WotC, go back to making magic the addiction, and pokemon, it's all you are now, ever were, and ever will be good at.
True, but a first level character really no longer as to worry every kobold or dire rat killing them in one hit (especially the minion types), or at least, being able to take off 75% of your HP in one hit since you only started with 6. The extra HP are a plus without adding the complication of a system like SDC from the Palladium systems, although that is a good system as well.
The main things I noticed book keeping wise are as follows:
1) Effects are no longer a number of rounds, its either a) until end of next turn, b) until you save at the end of your turn or c) until end of encounter, up to 5 minutes, which are essentially the same thing.
2) You'll no longer waste 30 minutes as the spellcasters pick their new spells for the day. True wizards still pick their daily powers, but that should go quickly.
3) Thanks to minions, you have to track HP for less monsters at a time.
I think the effect tracking will be the most immediate increase in game speed. I just ran a 3.5 encounter last night with the following effects:
1) Players cast Haste and several invisibilities before combat started, as well as several buffing spells with durations in rounds.
2) BBEG had several defensive spells with duration in rounds.
3) Other monsters had an ability that caused slow, which would tempoarily negate haste for characters afflicted by it for a random number of rounds
4) BBEG was also a mind flayer, so there were mind blasts used at various times which caused stun for random number of rounds to each target.
Now, if the combat is quick, this usually isn't a problem; but this fight went for 10-13 rounds, so various effects started wearing off at various times, and with 6 PCs and 3 monsters, and people using delay actions, its really easy to lose track of which round you're actually in and what round and when in each round a given effect ends.
Last night bought the books and played RPGA with pregen'd characters, it was fun.
If (?) you like to whine, whine about this: Druids and Barbarians are GONE. Spell scrolls are gone. Grey elves are now the whipping boys of the racial soup IMHO.
The statement about clerics being nonessential is misleading. Everyone gets 6-9 healing surges. Once per encounter everyone can get back 1/4th their max HP using a standard action. But once per encounter didn't go far in our adventure. We depended heavily on our cleric and paladin for healing in every combat, in almost every round after the first. Clerics and warlords can heal you using a minor action (think swift action), it uses one of your surges that you cannot otherwise use. Paladins have at-will powers that allow them to attack and grant you temporary hit points or defense bonuses at the same time, and they can spend surges to heal you.
There are two new classes- Warlocks and Warlords. In the new scheme Wizards (formerly known as sorcerors) get the area effects and line-of-effect attacks, Warlocks get attacks that target only one foe but readily exploit its defensive weaknesses. (My Level 1 Warlock had 3 At-will powers, one vs Fortitude, one vs Reflex, and one vs Will. So I was a threat to bricks and blasters alike.) Warlords grant other nearby party members immediate actions and help them heal. Fighters get powers that combine a weapon attack with pushing foes around, knockdown, or allow others to retreat without facing attacks of opportunity. The ability to push was incredibly powerful in our adventure, our fighter just kept pushing one foe off a bridge until he expired. Rogues are a bit more combat ready and have many push abilities, they can also dash in, attack, and dash out in the same round. Rangers lose the feeble forest magic and get better attacks and increased hit chance, their armor is now feeble and IMHO they require stealth and athletics to use the two-weapon form.
Every character gets at-will powers you may use as often as you like, so we used them nearly every turn. About the only time we used a basic attack was for attacks of opportunity. Attacks of opportunity have been drastically reigned in. We fought a chainmaster who teleported through our lines to assault our back row, but he was feeble compared to the spiked chain wielders of edition 3.5.
Our prebuilt adventure was supposed to be too tough and get us all killed in order to demonstrate how death works, but our tactically disinclined party managed to beat everything with only 1 PC knocked unconscious. Our GM had specific tactical instructions in the adventure which he followed to the letter, but the instructions made the monsters throw away their terrain advantages. We defeated a dangerous exploding skeleton by pushing it off a 30' cliff. I pushed a berserker off a narrow bridge into a fast moving river, keeping it out of combat for some time. All characters and monsters are tougher, so you'll get some time to play instead of getting killed in the surprise round.
Halflings are slightly improved in that they can call for an attack against them to be rerolled. Dwarves too, they get to use a Healing Surge as a minor action, freeing up their standard action for better things. Eladrin ((tutu-wearing) grey elves) get to teleport 5 squares once per encounter sorry everyone but they are feeble. Once per combat Elves get to reroll a poor attack roll as a free action. Dragonborn get a breath weapon, but it is only as good as their Constitution- which they do not get bonuses to- and that tends to dictate their career path. Half-elves can take any 1st level at-will power from any other class and use it as an encounter power, but this isn't that powerful, they also give a bonus to Group Diplomacy, which the GM forbade us from doing, so they are feeble. In addition to the extra skill and feat of 3.5, Humans get an extra at-will power at 1st level, which can be nice if you can't decide which powers you want.
The biggest change I saw was the u
If your definition of paternity here involves reproduction via indoctrination, not insemination, then yes this is how geeks have reproduced for many, many years. And geeks reproducing in this manner don't have to expend resources on dealing with the larval stages. :)
My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
Actually a left to bang my DMs sister...good times.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Something about the new edition's been bothering me for a while, and I think I finally figured out what it was.
I've only looked briefly at the rules, so maybe I'm wrong in some of this.
The alignment system isn't as "broken" as it looks. The original frankly wasn't that great, and the new one isn't so very different. It looks silly at first, but only if you're used to the old one, which has been there since 1st edition. Neither one was a hard and fast stricture on how you can role-play your character, despite some people trying to make it that.
The new races actually look kind of cool. And all classes having "powers" which are about the same. For instance, some have pointed out that there's now no functional difference between a ranger firing his bow every round and a wizard firing off a magic missile every round. OK, but there's still a big difference in flavor. Although I'm going to miss them each having their own separate advantages, disadvantages, and different defenses for each.
Out of combat skills have been scaled way back, which is kind of a shame. In 3.5, you could give more information, or make the NPCs a little friendlier based on knowledge or gather information or diplomacy checks, letting a character be a diplomat or master of social situations even if the player wasn't. In 4th ed, it seems like things like this rely purely on the players skill at convincing the DM. Which eliminates all those characters whose builds were focused on their ability to resolve encounters through other than violent means.
The biggest problem, though, is the online component. Maybe if I was playing regularly again I could justify it. But I'm between groups now and will probably be that way for a while. Normally, I'd be getting Dragon magazine during times like these, but they canceled that. But it's not just extra content it looks like. Significant parts of the rules - most of the classes, powers, monsters, etc. - will be online only. Having to pay an extra $15/month to make the core rulebooks complete makes me want to not buy the core rulebooks rather than make me want to pay extra for the online content.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
That's generally what business is about. Making money, making a living. No one is going to say, "My kids aren't going to eat tonight, but that's okay, because someone out there is having a fun game of AD&D."
In editions before 3/3.5 the Cleric's biggest value was as a healer. If you had several of them in the party, they could play different roles but if you only had one, he was mister medic and that's basically it.
3/3.5 replaced that problem with a different one. The designers were so desperate to make the class attractive, it became the most powerful class in the game with good combat skills and hit points, healing magic, and the ability to cast a whole host of effective combat spells and "buffs".
And "destroyers of D&D"? Give me a break. Ever play any of the following RPGs: Warhammer RPG, HERO, GURPS, Rifts, Rolemaster, Vampire: the Masquerade, Middle Earth RPG, or the (original) Star Wars RPG? I believe they all came out well before Wizards of the Coast produced 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons. Each has plenty of flaws, but if you've played a few of them it will give you enough perspective to see that all versions of Dungeons and Dragons have some ridiculous inconsistencies and poor design choices that interfere with or downright euthanize fun gameplay.
Wizards of the Coast didn't destroy Dungeons and Dragons. They just rearranged the problems, and I bet you're mostly angry because you have nostalgia for the particular set of problems you enjoyed when you first played some previous edition.
Particularly when the average wizard *swears* it's a +12, epic wand - .
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I agree with Lawful Evil. I loved playing that role.
LE was best in "court" based campaigns. Backstabbing, politicking, beheadings, coups and competing court factions. Good times.
Really a pain when I got a DM that only cared about the Lawful part and never let me be evil.
Continuing from where I left off. I have now read most of the PHB and skimmed the DMG.
Monks are gone. Rogues can use shuriken now but their weapons are further limited, e.g. they no longer get to use a rapier out of the box. Take 20 is gone.
What I said about scrolls is not quite correct. All of the PC powers I saw are pre-combat, combat, post-combat, or cantrips. Other magical effects such as Brew Potion, Cure Disease, and Knock are now called Rituals. To master a Ritual you must create or obtain a ritual book with a ritual in it, study the ritual for 8 hours, and have the Ritual Caster feat. (Wizards and Clerics have this feat at 1st level, you must be Trained in Arcana or Religion skill to have this feat.) You can then use the ritual as much as you like. Rituals can be condensed into a one-use scroll which anyone can use. You cannot use a ritual scroll to create a ritual book, but you can use your ritual book to create several ritual scrolls. A blank ritual book can be bought or made for 50gp (which is cheap in this game, we earned 50gp in our first fight.) Rituals themselves have a component cost and a market price. A ritual scroll can be created for twice these costs. Each ritual relies on a key skill, and your skill roll often determines duration or power of the effect. You cannot Take 10 on skill checks of this sort.
Each combat round you get a Standard action, a Move action, and a Minor action. You can use a Move or Minor in place of your Standard, and you can use a Minor in place of your Move. Most of your best stuff requires a Standard action, but there are some cool things you can do with a Minor action. Free actions are still around but sparse. There are now interrupts, abilities that you can automatically use in certain circumstances. You can still Ready an action for use in certain circumstances.
As I said before, although your character begins with many Healing Surges (some classes get 10 + Con modifier), the use of them is limited. Once per encounter every character may use an ability called Second Wind that uses up a Healing Surge to regain 1/4 their hit points. Most of the healing abilities force the character being healed to use a healing surge. If you drink a healing potion you must spend a healing surge. Drinking a potion is now a minor action so it doesn't interfere with combat the way it used to.
There are now three tiers of adventuring: the heroic tier L1-10, the paragon tier L11-20, and the epic tier L21-30. Generally, Paragon parties can take on adult dragons, Epic can take on ancient, and a good Heroic party could possibly beat a young lairless dragon.
There are many new feats, "new" meaning that they weren't in the 3.5 PHB but were possibly in books I never bothered to buy. In the heroic tier many of the weapons combat feats remain, power attack has been nerfed. Spell feats have been reworked by damage type- instead of getting a bonus to alteration spells you now get a bonus to, say, acid attacks.
Saving throws are different now. Gone are the days of using your best attack only to watch the GM roll dice behind his screen before triumphantly telling you the bad guy made his save again (just because he wants the fight to go on longer). Instead you have 4 defenses: AC, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. They all work like AC did according to how resistant you are to attacks that work against each kind. If you are using a magic effect against a foe you roll a hit roll using your Intelligence or Charisma or whatever against his Reflex or AC or whatever.
There used to be dozens of skills. Now there are 17. Some skills like Bluff are largely unchanged, others like Thievery have absorbed several of the old skills. Skills are important for gaining some feats, using powers, using rituals, getting an Epic Destiny, and other stuff.
Armor use is simply a matter of getting the armor use proficiency feats. There are 6 armor types now, in order of weakness: cloth, leather, hide, chain, scale, and plate. Fighters can't
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Did the coastal wizards kill it with a fireball? :)
Wonderful examination of 4e. Thanks!
The price printed on the back of the books are $5 more north of the border. The current exchange rate at http://xe.com/ucc gives the difference of around $0.60.
Guess what I didn't buy today?
About bards, traps, death, implements, magic item creation, feats, rogues, tieflings, artwork, and monsters.
Bards are gone.
Any class can spot a trap now. It works like this: Everyone has a skill called Perception which helps them Listen, Search, and Spot. It relies on Wisdom, so the Int bonus to Search is gone. Traps can be Spotted rather than Searched for, which speeds up the game. If the party isn't actively looking for traps, the GM uses their Passive Perception scores. This is them Taking 10 on their Perception check. The GM makes a roll for each character rather than one roll for the group. An active Perception check is a minor action that can be done while moving. Traps have levels like monsters and you get the XP for avoiding, breaking, disabling, or outsmarting it once it has been detected. If you "go the other way" and never managed to detect the trap, then you never encountered it and get no XP. In this case it's the GM's fault-- he needs to move the trap so that you can encounter it or place two identical traps on the two paths.
One trap is a False Floor Pit, a trap for a level 1 party of 5, worth 100xp. It covers 10'x10', or 2 5' squares x 2 5' squares. It is 10' deep, which can deal 1d10 damage. A DC 20 Perception check shows that there is false stonework on the floor to indicate the trap. That's a L1 character without Perception actively looking for traps and rolling a natural 20, or a L1 character trained in Perception with a 20 Wisdom (possible but very minmax) making his Passive Take-10 Perception check. So unless you're looking for traps and have a decent score you will stumble into it. 1d10 is not enough to kill even wizards now, so you'll survive, you just have to get out. All traps work as attacks against one of your Defenses. This trap makes a +4 attack vs your Reflex defense. At level 1 most characters have a 13 Reflex tops, so this trap has a better than 50% chance to snag most adventurers. If the trap "hits" you take 1d10 falling damage and fall prone, if it "misses" your movement action ends on the last stable square. As for countermeasures, an adjacent character can trigger the trap with a DC 10 Thievery check causing the false floor to fall through. (Thievery is Disable Device, Open Lock, and Sleight of Hand as one Dexterity-powered skill, Int no longer powers Disable Device). A DC 10 Thievery check is 50% for any shmoe and probably 90% for a trained L1. If you fail this check by 5 or more you, er, trigger the trap, which was what you were trying to do in the first place, so... I guess that means you fall in. A DC 25 Thievery check can disable the trap and make the floor safe for walking on, but if you fail by 5 or more then it will trigger when you try to cross it. If you fail by 4 or less then you know you failed and can try again. You can merely delay the trap instead of disabling it, this gives you a +5 bonus to your check, +2 bonus is added if you use thief tools. Delaying the trap only gives you 1 turn to all cross the affected area before it readies again. A character who makes a DC 11 Athletics (Climb/Jump/Swim) check with a running start, or DC 21 check without a running start, jumps the trap. Athletics DC 15 to climb in or out. This trap can be made Elite (tougher and worth 200xp) by increasing the Perception and Thievery DCs by 2, making it 20' deep, adding poisoned spikes to the bottom. A character who falls in would then take 3d10 +5 ongoing poison damage until they make their save. This is enough to kill a level 1.
Death works like this. When you hit 0HP you fall unconscious. Every round thereafter you must make saves, remember saves are usually 50%. If you fail 3 saves you die. If you roll a nat 20 on any save you spend a healing surge and stabilise at 1/4th your hp, you are still prone. If while you are unconscious you take damage equal to your bloodied value, which is half your max hp, you die. Any healing effect will restore you from unconsciousness even if you have no healing surges left and would be requir
About races and tanks.
Half-orcs and Gnomes are gone.
I've looked over the classes best suited to front-line work and from what I can see Paladins beat Fighters to the point where I believe the game is unbalanced. First of all, Paladins get everything Fighters get except military ranged proficiency. Military Ranged is only one weapon: a bow, which can be trained as a feat, or had for free if you choose the Elf race. Paladins get 1 more surge than fighters. Paladins get 1 point each in Fortitude, Reflex, and Will whereas Fighters get +2 Fortitude. But +2 Fortitude is something a front line character will generally already have through Strength or Constitution. Cleave and Power Attack have been utterly nerfed. Paladins can wear platemail out of the box and fighters can't, that's unbelievable, and if you want to learn it you must have 15s in Con AND Str. Fighters can get Athletics skill while Paladins can't, but Athletics has an armor check penalty. Paladins get a free skill trained: Religion, plus a more useful class list to choose from. Paladins have powers on their list that allow them to make Will attacks. Almost every fighter power works against AC, a few work against Reflex. This is a problem because a front-line fighter will generally be fighting armored foes, not squishy backrow mages. Most of the Fighter powers are utterly wasted if you miss, some paladin powers have a beneficial effect even if you miss. You no longer have to be lawful good to be a paladin, you just have to have affinity toward one of the gods. Fighters lock many of their powers to a particular type of weapon, requiring certain ability scores and the like. But in most modules you don't get to pick the kind of magic weapon you'll find. Paladin benefits work so long as the weapon can be used in melee. It looks like you can even use some paladin attacks when throwing a melee weapon with the Heavy Thrown property (e.g. a throwing hammer.)
The new class Warlord starts with less armor than the fighter. I like its prime stats, but I can't see using this class without a party of 5 others, it just doesn't seem worth it. Warlord is almost the new Bard, I mean he's in chainmail, blesses people, is worse at it than clerics or paladins, and so forth. Most of the warlord powers that bless more than one person require everyone to be within 5 squares of you while you make a melee attack. That leaves out the back row strikers since they can hit from 10 squares. Ranger and rogue strikers could benefit: since their attacks are largely vs AC, they could be moving into the 5 square range to take out the enemy back row mages with their poor AC. But Wizards and Warlocks would need Fortitude or AC attacks to hit those, and I didn't find many with range 10. Most of the warlord powers require two attacks to hit: yours and the basic melee attack of some random ally. That's 2 Strength hit rolls against AC, which requires twice the luck to do anything. Paladins beat warlords as well. I fully expect to be leading a party of 4 paladins when we convene next
Saturday.
I guess if I had to fix fighters with house rules, I would add skills to their class list and give them an extra trained one. They need a Will attack encounter power of some kind, I guess I'd have to invent one. Fighters should be able to Retrain 1 Feat after every encounter, so they can make best use of magic weapons they find. The fighter weapon specialty feats should lower their stat requirements by 2 each. And fighters have to have platemail.
To fix the warlord class with house rules, so much would depend on who you had with you. There is no more Leadership feat to assign cohorts to you. Maybe I would reinstate the Leadership feat as a warlord class power granting him cohorts that work well with his class powers. He can't wait until level 6 for this, he really needs it by level 3, before the player walks away in disgust.
All the other classes seem decent to me but this is a pretty serious matter as one kind of tank is far superior to the others. On the other hand, most NPC style monsters are modeled after the Fighter rather than the Paladin, so I'd bet on my paladins against the GM's "fighters" anytime.
I bet you're mostly angry because you have nostalgia for the particular set of problems you enjoyed when you first played some previous edition.
Uh, thanks for telling me what I think but you're wrong.
I have a problem with WotC business model and what it's done to DnD. If you don't see it you must be blind because I found tons of others who've seen it and openly posted about it on this very article. Did you go around telling them what they think too?
Aside from the ability to change up any spell slot to a healing spell name me one thing that got twinked about a cleric that existed in an earlier edition.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Equipment, time, and my take on article comments.
Your weapon proficiency, purchased with a feat or through race or class features, gives you a +2 or +3 bonus to hit, depending on the weapon. Reach has been changed, you can no longer make attacks of opportunity at range. Reach lets you attack both 1 and 2 squares away regardless of weapon. Apart from some special powers I might not know about, the only benefit to getting the Superior spiked chain weapon is a +3 bonus to hit vs the +2 from using a glaive. As far as I can see Bash/Slash/Thrust has been done away with. Most of the weapons are approximate to others in their group. Some of the weapons have the Heavy Crit property. Normally a Critical hit deals the maximum on the damage dice, but Heavy Crit weapons deal an additional die of damage you must roll. Heavy Crit weapons usually do smaller damage dice, 2d4 rather than 2d6 for example, or have less chance to hit. None of the weapons are labeled 19-20/x2 anymore, you need a power or magic to increase the critical threat or else you can only crit on a natural 20.
Heavy crossbow is gone. All missile weapons except the Crossbow (lt crossbow) can load as a free action, the crossbow requires you use your minor action to load. Two weapon fighting is completely dependent on powers, you cannot just grab 2 weapons and take 2 attacks. The ranger 2 weapon stance lets you use one-hand weapons in offhand instead of just offhand weapons, increasing the offhand damage die from 1d6 to 1d8, it also gives you the Toughness feat for 5 extra hitpoints per tier. IMHO the archery stance is worthless, if I wanted to be an archer ranger I would still take the two weapon stance and pick up the crappy feat bestowed by the archery stance at my leisure.
You start with 100gp. Plate armor now costs 50gp, a greatsword costs 30, a handaxe costs 5.
The DMG says you should be plunking through 1 encounter per hour and need 10 encounters to level. Add to this an additional hour per session for setup and resolution and we're talking 2-3 game days to gain 1 level. Gaining a level grants you 1 or two new powers. IMHO this is too slow, so I plan to propose this be sped up. Frankly I've explored my options thoroughly in 3 encounters and think I should have a level by then, but this makes things more complicated for modules. The GM would have to reuse mooks already slain in the encounter by reintroducing them as "reinforcements" coming from outside the area in order to up the difficulty for the party's new level. I still think it would work. One thing I know is that there are too many other fun things to do to spend every Saturday for an entire year getting my character to level 30, it would take at least twice that with everyone else fitting in time for real life as well.
I feel that the article comments are largely uninformed. If I were a cynic I would think they carried a caustic faultfinding edge simply to appear Interesting +4. Here's my take on them:
"Gaming stores aren't for people who want to run a business, they're for people who want to show off their gaming collection."
I bought my books Thursday night at the largest gaming store in my area. Most of the other gaming stores around here have closed down or have become gaming halls with a few basic sale items. The store had staff ready with RPGA modules, miniatures, and dungeon tiles so we could learn how to play. Jeremy from at Rainy Day Games (www.rainy-day-games.com/) in Beaverton Oregon took a module that was supposed to kill us all outright and made it a lot of fun instead. None of us knew how to play when we started and we left 5 hours later feeling like we knew our way around the new system. Normally I would have waited 5 days and bought the books for half price at amazon, but then I would have been playing with mysel- er alone. Being able to try the game out at the store was a huge selling point for my wife and the others there. From now on I'll be doing it this way even if it costs more. I want to thank Jeremy for runn
This series of four comments is extraordinarily detailed and informative. I would blow all my mod points in here if I had any; people should be reading this rundown from someone with obvious hands-on experience and familiarity with the new books instead of many of the one-off snide remarks, if they want to understand what's changed.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
What I wouldn't do for the ability to mod "-1, Plain Wrong"
Clarifying my mistakes, the new take on classes, how the DMG teaches dungeonbuilding, why I hate the pantheon, observations.
My take on skill challenges was not informed by the DMG. Basically, the GM describes the situation to you, mentioning some specific skills or skill groups that might be useful. If you use the skills he mentioned then the DC is lower, unless he has notes saying a specific skill will always fail. If you make up some BS about how you'll use a skill he didn't mention, the DC is high, but you can use it, however you may only use it once. A number of skill failures is set for the challenge. You must get twice this number of successes BEFORE you get this many failures. If you succeed in a skill challenge you get some benefit, if you fail you experience some setback but can still continue the adventure. We failed our skill challenge because I didn't understand it, but I doubt we would have succeeded, its just too hard to get twice the successes before failing. House rules will be required here IMHO.
If we're honest with ourselves, multiclassing was always about trying to get a survival edge to protect the investment of our time spent creating our characters. Now that they gave us more HP and softened the death rules that problem is pretty well solved. If I were to use multiclassing now, I would use it to give weak classes like fighters a Will or Fortitude attack, to broaden their effectiveness. Prestige classes are gone, but this pretty much covers what we used them for also.
Take 20 is NOT gone, but handed over entirely to the GM's discretion. For example, if the players say "We'll search here until we find something", the DMG instructs the GM to act as if they rolled a 20, in the interest of keeping the game rolling.
Spell scrolls are NOT gone, they are called Ritual scrolls. You need to have Religion skill to use a Divine ritual from a ritual book, Arcana skill to use an Arcane ritual from a ritual book, but anyone can use a ritual scroll.
You can have more than 9 healing surges per day. Healing surges can also be used to power some magic items and some defensive powers, so when a power grants you the right to use a healing surge you can possibly use it to grant you increased ability instead of healing.
My assessment of fighters not getting plate armor was confused by a poor understanding of equipment values. AC values: Leather +2, Hidearmor +3, those are light armors allowing you to use Dex bonus. Chainmail +6, Scale +7, Plate +8, these are heavy armors not allowing you to use Dex bonus. Light shield +1, Heavy shield +2, shields also add their bonus to your Reflex defense. Armor heavier than leather still yields an armor check penalty affecting skill rolls including your Take 10 passive rolls. In addition you can buy improved sets of nonmagical armors of every type I just named. Battleforged platemail, for example, is pricey but has a higher AC bonus than stock plate.
I wanted to know more about how the new classes worked. I looked at every class and at every power under 6th level for every class. Using the build recommendations I estimated general 1st level defense scores and noted at-will and periodic capabilities to target specific defenses. (To beat the defense numbers here you would need to roll higher on d20 with your level 1 attack bonus, which is generally between +3 and +6.)
Cleric, AC ~16, Fortitude ~12-13, Reflex ~10, Will ~15-16, has at-will attacks for AC and Reflex, periodic for Will and eventually Fortitude, good at targeting everything.
Fighter, AC ~17-19, Fortitude ~15-16, Reflex ~10-14, Will ~10-11, has at-will attacks for AC, periodic eventually for Reflex, best at targeting "soft targets"- creatures with lower AC.
Paladin, AC ~18-20, Fortitude ~13-15, Reflex ~11-13, Will ~13-15, has at-will attacks for AC, periodic attacks for Reflex and Will and eventually Fortitude, best against soft targets
Ranger, AC ~15-17, Fortitude ~13-15, Reflex ~13-15, Will ~10-11, all attacks against AC, clearly optimized t