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Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Announced
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Aug 16, 2007 08:42 PM
from the roll-for-initiative dept.
from the roll-for-initiative dept.
bigstrat2003 writes "For the past day, Wizards of the Coast has had a countdown to "4dventure" on their web site. The countdown ran out at 6:30 eastern time today (and the web site promptly crashed), but stories are already appearing on the rest of the web. Wizards also has had their 4th edition forums up for a couple of days."
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D&D 4th Edition Details Released 63 comments
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!"
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Why did the site crash? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why did the site crash? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Insightful)
First they cancel the popular and successful Dungeon and Dragon magazines by not renewing the subscription with Paizo, and next they pull a stunt like this? I don't believe I'm the only one to find the DRM-laden "Digital Initiative" to be potentially a very poor substitute for the magazines, and this blunder will only compound the ill will directed against them.
This move will only alienate their consumer base. The fact that 3.5 is working, and in no need of overhaul, exposes the fact that they are doing this under the motivation of short-sighted greed. I shudder to think what sort of backlash (as before with Dungeon and Dragon were canceled) is taking place on the forum.
I'm literally in shock right now. I thought Wizards of the Coast understood its consumer base better and was comprised of people more concerned about the integrity of the game and more competent about long-term business strategies.
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Funny)
I hope you're near a hospital. Do you want me to call 911 for you?
Or perhaps find a dictionary so you can look up "literally"?
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well at least the "news for nerds" part is back (Score:5, Funny)
Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
Climate/Terrain: Windows
Frequency: Common
Organization: Solitary or cluster
Activity Cycle: Any
Diet: RAM
Intelligence: Non- (0)
Treasure: Nil
Alignment: Chaotic evil
No. Appearing: 1-1,000,000
Armor Class: 9
Movement: 1
Hit Dice: 2
THACO: 20
No. of Attacks: 1
Damage/Attack: 1-4
Special Attacks: Crashing
Special Defenses: Nil
Magic Resistance: Nil
Size: L
Morale: Unreliable (2)
XP Value: 12
Re:Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
Or use the classic:
Nephilium
Re:Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
My character is standing watch one night while the rest of the party is sleeping. A lone goblin approaches.
Me: I toss a marshmallow to the goblin
*DM looks at we strangely for a moment*: the goblin pokes the marshmallow with his spear and then sticks it into his mouth
Me: I cast enlarge on the marshmallow.
*everyone falls out of their chairs*
(sometimes I think the DM just wanted to see what the heck I was going to pull next)
First edition forever! (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to try 3e when it came out... I figured it was really cool that my favorite RPG was getting a facelift, as I was never really satisfied with the 2nd edition rules. But alas, after trying it out and playing it for a few weeks I concluded that it was a big mistake to have sold all my 2e stuff to finance the purchasing of 3rd edition material. 3rd edition D&D was not a role playing game as I understood it... it was basically just a pen-and-paper version of a computer game, requiring a ridiculous amount of number crunching and bean counting. Suddenly every single thing that a character was supposedly able to do was governed by a skill associated with a number... taking away a vital element of creativity that in my opinion is a vital core of any real RPG. Rather than trying to reacquire the 2nd edition stuff I formerly had, however, I decided instead to go all the way back to the beginning (well, almost) and go with first edition AD&D, because the number of books published for it was small enough that it wouldn't completely break my pocketbook to get them all. I spent a couple of weeks hunting for bargains on ebay and eventually got all the hardcover rulebooks for the game. I bought pdf's of modules through rpgnow, and I was good to go. I have now have a group of 4 players, and we play weekly.
Fans of 1st edition AD&D, check out the Dragonsfoot web site [dragonsfoot.org]. 2nd edition is well received there too.
Remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, man, have to spend more money (Score:5, Funny)
The Saga Continues (Score:5, Informative)
In 3ed or 3.5ed D&D, if you want to play a fighter (and you're optimizing your character), you play a spellcaster, and use spells to make yourself more human than the human.
At the San Diego Comicon this year I was a WOTC volunteer who was basically the 'Star Wars Saga Edition Guy' who got to explain the rules of Saga Edition to maybe 50 tables of people, running half hour games each time. Since Saga Edition is supposed to be real close to 4th edition, I'm probably as familiar as anyone with the hypothetical rules right now. Saga edition, in a nutshell... is okay. It removes your armor class and saving throws. Instead you have a joint AC/Save thing called Fort Defense, Reflex Defense and Will Defense, and the attacker makes all dice rolls (with the defense numbers normally 10 points higher than your old save, so a +5 reflex save would be a 15 reflex defense in the new system) so if I were to, say, fireball the party as a DM, I'd roll one d20 with my 10d6 fireball damage. If I got a 15 on the d20 'attack' roll, it would do full damage to everyone with a Reflex Defense of 15 or lower, and half damage to everyone higher. So you don't have to wait for 6 people to break out their dice, figure out their saving throw bonuses, etc. You just pitch the dice together, announce the result, and move on. A nice touch, though I'm a bit leery of running spells like Wail of the Banshee that way, as it will greatly increase the chance of TPKs -- we'll see if they keep one save for the party with that.
AC is now your Reflex Defense.
They have something called a condition track which runs concurrently with your hit points (you still have hit points -- Saga Edition is 90% the same as D20 rules). Any time you take more than your 'damage threshold' in damage (it's usually somewhere around a number between 15 to 20), you get a point of impairment, which adds a cumulative penalty to all your D20 rolls (-1, -2, -5, -10 KO), until you get knocked out at 5 points of impairment. So even if you have 200 hit points, if you take 20 damage 5 times in a combat, you'll be KOed, because they were bigger hits to you than 10 10 point hits.
The main thing that annoys me about the new system is that it is a little too generic. There's very little difference in the classes, with saves being almost totally revamped so that everyone's saves will be within 2 points of each other (your class save bonus only applies once, and you get the best of all classes that you multiclass in, and then progresses the same for everyone). Likewise, everyone gets a bonus to damage equal to half their class level. So a 20th level noble does the same damage with a blaster as a 20th level Jedi (3d6+10). The only difference in the classes are their 'special ability' talent trees, which work like in World of Warcraft. Essentially, every other level you get a new 'talent', many of which have prerequisites of other talents. So if you want the ability to reroll an attack roll once per day (a rogue ability) you might need the talent to reroll a skil
New disclaimer on the cover too (Score:5, Funny)
Great Potential, Worrisome Indications (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as people complaining about having to buy another version I sympathize but you don't have to buy the new version and WoTC shouldn't be forced not to fix the system just because some of us bought the previous version. I don't know if I will buy the new one (I have 3.5) but the next generation of gamers shouldn't be stuck with the imperfections of the system we played.
On the other hand I'm a bit worried about the online subscription part. The publication of feats and other rule changes in dragon was bad enough but an online subscription has even more of an official air about it and will give WoTC a very strong incentive to put overpowerful feats in the subscription. Hopefully, they will mostly just include story/background material and the occasional fix but we will have to wait and see.
Did they fix the stupid combat system yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every character has and "armor class" (defense) and "THAC0 = To Hit Armor Class Zero" (offense). The "THAC0" is used to determine whether or not you make contact with your opponent. Then your strength and other factors determine the amount of damage..
Why in the hell would wearing really good armor make you less likely to be hit??
Like its hard to hit a guy wearing full plate mail?
If anything, wearing heavy armor should make you easier to hit.
The armor should absorb damage, not make you less likely to be hit...
still playing 2nd edition... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I knew if I waited long enough... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I knew if I waited long enough... (Score:5, Funny)
GYGAX
Greetings! It's a
to meet you!
http://www.imsdb.com/transcripts/Futurama-Anthlog
Re:I knew if I waited long enough... (Score:5, Funny)
*shakes his fist at the gods of moderation*