Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Announced 463
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."
Why did the site crash? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:3, Informative)
I played 2nd edition, first edition cyclopedia, 3rd edition, and I've been interested in Open Game Licensing since around 3.5 I have visited the thread yet, but here's a link.
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?s=a7885fRe:I'm not buying any more WoTC products... (Score:2, Informative)
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
That's called 'Bad GMing' (Score:3, Informative)
Most rules books for RPGs explicitly say 'these rules only at the discretion of the GM', and they are right to do so. If a character is doing infinite damage every turn due to munchkining and slavish and/or badly twisted interpretations of some rules set, the GM is not doing his/her job, period. My favorite D&D system was 3rd ed, right out of the box (well, corebooks); needed few dice, easily scalable, removed most of the cruft from prior eds, and was easy to ad hoc or homebrew rules. When a book rule gave a counterintuitive mechanic for something, I or whoever else was GMing would craft a house rule that worked better. I have found that so long as the players trust that you are being fair and attempting for a fun game, they tend not to be crummy sports about the rules.
Re:Well at least the "news for nerds" part is back (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Did they fix the stupid combat system yet? (Score:4, Informative)
That is why certain armor types were better against certain weapon types.
Piercing weapons had a bonus to hit plate type armor, but a penalty to chain type armors.
slashing weapons had the opposite.
Bludgeoning weapons would have a penalty for leather, and an even worse penalty for padded armor types. etc...
It was all covered in the first edition rulebook, and that was only like 80 pages long.
You're refering to the SRD (Score:3, Informative)
WoTC has provided an open source license that they call "open game license" (for, get this "open game content"). They have NOT provided the core books under this license.
What they have done however (and I applaud) is provide a vast majority of the core rules under the OGL. This is referred to as the SRD (System Reference Document). The SRD does not contain everything that the books do. In general, the books are more verbose, but the SRD relates the rules just as well. The SRD rarely says "why" (as the books occasionally do). I believe there are a rare few few key rules not covered in the SRD.
The best place to read the SRD? In my opinion it is at www.d20srd.org (no connection to myself whatsoever). Everything is HYPERLINKED! The site is amazing in terms of quick access to everything. It even includes spell and monster filters to help navigate those areas. This can make building adventures much easier at times. (Example: the SRD includes 5 Undead monsters between CR 5 and 15 who have a lawful alignment; beats flipping through the book and finding one or two.)
D&D vs Roleplaying (Score:4, Informative)
Each gaming system has certain strengths and weaknesses, and D20's strength lies in its appeal to munchkins, rules lawyers, etc. Now, I'll also admit that there are some systems which manage to out munchking D20, Rifts comes to mind.
But I think the original poster's point stands: If you want to play something more than a hack and slash type game, you are vastly better off with a different system. For pure kick in the door type monster slaughters D20 isn't bad at all, you want a more nuanced gaming experience and you'll find that the rules begin to hold you back. I'll take GURPS, thanks. Now if only SJ games would do something like the OGL I'd be truly happy, and I think GURPS would benefit.
Re:Oh okay, realistic combat (Score:5, Informative)
People who play role playing games (and write rules for them) routinely overestimate both the weight and encumbrance of armour. The heaviest combat armour from any period (i.e. ancient Greeks to late mediaeval) weighed around 40-50lbs, which is about half a modern military field pack, and unlike said pack, much of the weight was distributed around the body instead of being a heavy lump at the back. There are mediaeval woodcuts of men in full plate armour doing cartwheels, hand-stands, and running and jumping, and Joan of Arc routinely wore it despite being a peasant girl who wasn't trained as a warrior, so it was nothing like as restrictive and heavy as RPG rules (with the notable exception of Chivalry and Sorcery) routinely make it.
NB: many of the myths about mediaeval armour in particular come from the Victorian English, who failed to distinguish between late mediaeval jousting plate and war / combat armour. Jousting plate was massively reinforced on the left-hand side (the lance was couched in the right-hand, pointing to the left, so the left side took the impact), and restricted arm movement to what was necessary for aiming the lance and moving a shield up and down by about a foot, so people wearing it were unable to mount their horses without assistance. Jousting saddles were also specially designed to have low backs so that whoever got hit by a lance slid off instead of arching backwards, which experience had shown was an excellent way to end up as a paraplegic.
"What, you were already wearing? For the entire 6 hour journey through the old forest?"
I suggest you read some history, because people have been wearing armour of all types for periods of far longer than six hours for thousands of years, in climates ranging from winter ice to hot deserts and steamy, humid jungles. The reason for this was logistical: armour had to be transported by some means during campaigns, and wearing it was an excellent means of doing so that left valuable baggage train space free for food, water, missile weapon ammunition, siege artillery parts, and all the other sundry items that an army in the field requires.
"Okay you are entering combat finally, start the counter at 1. What counter you ask? Your exhaustion counter. You do not think you are going to last forever with a ton of steel hanging from your body do you? Ten rounds, that is your max before you are starting to loose it."
The main fatigue factor in pre-firearms battles came from the fact that swinging manual weapons of 2lbs+ around is a lot like chopping down trees with an axe, a notably exhausting activity despite the fact that it isn't usually done while wearing armour. Fatigue might be slightly increased by adding between 20 and 40 lbs of extra weight, but the effect would be minimal due to the fact that most of the warrior class (i.e. D&D fighters) had been training to fight in it since they were seven years old. A far bigger problem once helms with full face protection became common was limited visibility, which made it difficult to deal with threats that weren't directly in front of the armour wearer, thereby rendering them vulnerable to attacks from the side and rear.
"Also heavy armour tends to be very rigid, metals of the age just ain't the flexible, start counter3 to see when it will simply shatter."
The plates that were used in both platemail and full plate were hammer-forged, not cast, so they deformed when struck with sufficient force (i.e. they sustained dents) rather than shattering. There is no documented, or for that matter even mythical account of armour shattering, and there are no existing examples of even the cheapest munition plate (i.e. the stuff that was handed out to foot soldiers, and collected up again for storage) that shows any sign of shattering or cracking, although there are many which either exhibit dents and holes, or signs of dents / holes that ha