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!"

Re:Well fuck

[donscarletti]

A hat trick is a term from cricket referring to the rare instance of a bowler getting out three consecutive batsmen out on three consecutive balls. From there it spread to other sports (cricket was still widely played in North America when the term came into use, which was also before ice hockey became common). Cricket players don't tend to be violent off the field, although bowling to the batsman's face is considered legal as long as it bounces first.

Holy Power Levels Batman!!!

[BobMcD]

I'm looking at the back of that specific Tiefling Wizard's sheet, and it seems to me that conversion is going right out the window. This 1st level character seems pretty beefy to me, in terms of sheer spell face-meltage. Does 'At-Will' really mean "as much as you want, just so long as it is your turn"?

Likewise it seems the Fighter gets to throw a 3d10+5 blow once per day. Yes, I typed that right. 8-35 damage, once daily, renews if you miss - AT LEVEL ONE?

If so, wow. Just wow.

Re:Holy Power Levels Batman!!!

[BobMcD]

Nevermind! I now see that a kobold now has 27 hit points... So that fighter, once per day, MIGHT get to one-shot a kobold.

I now officially know nothing about D&D...

Re:D&D sucks

[cheesethegreat]

[i]I was hoping that someday we would see PnP actually go online, but I'm having my doubts.[/i]

Yeah, I wonder if that'll ever happen. We'd need forums and bulletin boards,

If only there were forums or chat rooms where we could play.
http://forums.gleemax.com/forumdisplay.php?f=278 [gleemax.com]
http://forums.gleemax.com/forumdisplay.php?f=342 [gleemax.com]
http://www.onlineroleplay.com/Chat_Rooms_And_IRC/ [onlineroleplay.com]

Of course, we'd need online dice-rolling programs to do it. Wonder where I could find those?

http://invisiblecastle.com/ [invisiblecastle.com]
http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/dice_roller/ [aroooo.com]

But that wouldn't be as good as having an electronic online game table sanctioned and run by the publishers themselves.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=905805 [gleemax.com]

You're right. We'll never see PnP go online. But it's nice to dream.

Re:New rules in the 4th edition

[owlman17]

While not quite exact, the list is based on this. [rpg.net]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Holy Power Levels Batman!!!

[dcollins]

Yes. One of the very first things that designers said publicly months ago is that conversions will not be possible to 4E. There's a bit of song-and-dance marketing that "the same idea in your head will now have different mechanics applied".

This is intentional, because they're trying to break compatibility with last edition's Open Gaming License (inspired by the GPL), and make D&D once again totally proprietary.

Re:Holy Power Levels Batman!!!

[Culture20]

Then you'll hate the stats in TFA: Kobolds have 27 HP, and a first level wizard with a 10 Con has 20 HP. Also notice that the wizard heals 5 HP 6 times a day, so now a wizard can take 40 arrows in the chest at first level.

Re:Classes

[starwed]

Psionics is not overpowered. [gleemax.com]

Re:I hate WotC

[mark-t]

Actually, it was the various settings that I think were the nail in the coffin for TSR... because not everybody in their market niche would be interested in buying every single campaign setting, they ended up fragmenting their audience to below sustainable thresholds. But it's not Planescape's fault, I still think that was the best campaign setting TSR ever came out with. Long before planescape came along, however, TSR was already in serious trouble.

When 2nd edition came out, had TSR instead of focusing on campaign settings, instead focused development on adventure modules that are enjoyable and good for one-off adventures that could be played in just a few hours, they really could have kept the gravy train going and probably never been in so much trouble that WotC was able to buy them out. The way this could work (and actually *did* work in the early first edition days when Gygax was still running things) is that people who had not necessarily played before could easily be invited to such a one-off session, where they could try the game with no major commitments and if they liked it, they could easily turn around and go buy their own books (the latter, of course, being where the most profit was, and an easy mechanism for bringing newcomers into the game ensured a continually growing market segment).

All that said, I'm sticking with first edition. The reason being is that the ruleset is the most manageable... There were less than a dozen rulebooks in total for first edition, and materials are pretty easy to come by cheaply on ebay.

Ain't It Cool has a 3-part review

[Robotech_Master]

There's a glowing playtest review of the game on Ain't It Cool News. Part One [aintitcool.com], Part Two [aintitcool.com]. Part Three should be posted some time today.

Re:Holy Power Levels Batman!!!

[debrisslider]

That's a complete lie. Here's the press release about the OGL for 4th edition [wizards.com]. There is a fee for a prerelease OGL, but once the game actually launches it's free. I assume they charge for the extra work getting the documents to the third party takes, and because there'll be an obvious bonus to other publishers due to the PR frenzy at release. And what's so bad about not being compatible? It's an entirely different rules set, designed to play much differently. It's not like there's a dearth of 3rd edition material that hasn't been played by the average group, and campaign settings have always been described in terms of both flavor and mechanics, so if you're really desperate for new ideas you could just steal them from there (or any other gaming company's publications). Also, I'm tired of hearing people complain about having to buy new books. No one is forcing you to upgrade if you really love 3ed that much, and all your REALLY need to play is the player's handbook (plus DMG and Monster Manual, but that's for the DM). I really wish I had ANY hobby as cheap as PNP RPGing can be; you can buy into D&D4e for less than the cost of two semi-recent video games. Buy a couple of supplements a year and you're still way below the threshold for basically any other hobby. There's plenty of fan-generated material you can get for free on the web, you seriously never have to spend more than $30/$90 plus dice ever to play the game.

Re:Is this really stil about gaming or...

[CronoCloud]

Yeah, the Rules Cyclopedia kicks ass. Everything you need, including the skills system presented in the Gazetteers. Even simple easy to use mass-combat and dominion rules in one book. Plus, Classic D&D (the Basic to Master's box sets or this book) is designed to remain balanced even when your characters hit high level.

Not only that, the book has a short overview of TSR's best and most underrated fantasy world, Mystara. Blows away Greyhawk (Oerth)for comprehensibility, blows away The Realms (Abeir-Toril) for coherence, and even on using "history" to good effect it beats out Dragonlance (Krynn)

Re:Well fuck

[Altima(BoB)]

Except maybe Ireland, where Gaelic Football is just called Football and its English counterpart is called Soccer.

And since they all stem from the same root game anyway, and are so named because they are played on foot rather than on horseback like Polo, it's a moot point.