D&D 4th Edition

[Dracos]

To group online commentary/mockery...  and eventually when it comes out, intelligent criticism.

---

Hopes I have for it, for basics?

Levels 1-3?  Mean something.  Seriously, it was bad in 2nd, 3 and 3.5 rendered it playable but not fun, it'd be a great step up to actually have your bottom rank heroes not generally be so remarkable fragile.  I know, I know, it is relevant for a lot of reasons, but you know...  I don't think I know anyone who would actively choose to play for a long period of time at level 1...  whereas I know plenty who are totally willing to play a character at anywhere in the mid ranges with near zero xp.  I can't remember seeing a good module printed for levels 1 and 2 characters.

Stats?  Charisma, may, theoretically, vanish.  I doubt it.  It still feels awkward for reasons others have said better than me.  What I would like is the end of the delusion that one stat is better than another.  It's a roleplaying game with a reasonably solid mechanic set for it.  On such, non-combat related things shouldn't be considered meh.  More relevantly?  Everything is combat related.  It doesn't matter the stat, I can make a build that totally benefits from it being high and ignores it being low.  Str?  Int?  Con?  Cha?  There's been so many options to make not only solid RP characters, but solid mechanics characters with one of these high and one low that renders the general 'Str is worth more than wis and dex..." bit stupid.  This is part of why certain races also predominate and particularly dominate certain classes.  "Oh boy, this drop to str for +2 to wis is really going to hurt my mainly non combatant ranged spell type cleric"

Races?  I'm glad their expanding the races.  I also hope they make them deeper and some of the differences more pronounced.  And be more common with downsides as well that aren't just a blink stat one.  Half-orcs and halflings are they only ones that really have any noticeable seeming downsides (and of course there's hint that statistically, that doesn't matter much to a well thought out halfling).  This doesn't mean each need side races or something, but less "this is human with two stat shifts and ...BONUSES?"  I dunno, humans don't have it bad, persay, it's just could be a bit more.

Arbitrary limits need to go.  They were the bane of 2nd ed and they remain the bane of 3rd ed.  Flatten out the bloody economy instead you ninnies.  Don't add "After this point, they're x10" or "you can only put 200000 gp worth of enchantments' or other silliness.  Yes, some goofs will spend everything on one item.  Amazingly, this is stupid and bad enough usually that it tends to backfire by itself, providing weaknesses the GMs can take advantage of.  A single disarm or sunder can be amazingly disruptive in such circumstances.  In very rare circumstances is some combination so good as to say 'even with an EXPONETIAL pricing increase, this is going to continue to be way too good..."  If it is? Then the price setup was wrong to begin with and you're probably running in a monty haul to have come across it anyway.   A gm that gives book declared treasure amounts is giving peanuts at level one and entire kingdoms of loot per encounter at level 20.  And worse beyond that.  Money doesn't need and shouldn't grow exponetially like it does.

And introduce banks already so folks don't get so utterly obsessed and tied up about devalued economies and carrying around bajillions of currency.  No one ever goes "You can't possibly pay 3 million for a house, because the money is worthless to anyone who can build a house and too much to carry!"  Yes, gold weighs too much and becomes a ridiculous thing to cart off and around if you actually think about it at higher levels.  There's lots of ways to deal with it besides simple handwaving the weight that folks are walking around with (even though in 3rd that's the best)

Skills need a rebuild from the ground up.  This wasn't possible to do in 3.0 or 3.5.  I dearly hope they do it in 4 as frankly, they come off as ridiculous for the most part right now, generally flopping into the 'can't fail' or 'almost impossible to succeed' almost always.  Skill feats remained almost eternally a joke and only were ever considered to take for:
role playing
Prestige class prereq
Because they were part of something that was broken

Usually the latter two.  There's got to be a better system that can be worked out here where skills enhance the roleplaying experience without falling into this odd crevease of uselessness/perfectness.  Look, I roll my 25 modified skill in diplomacy, everyone is suddenly my friend?  Come on, you can do better than that.  And make some options.

Disarm/Intimidate/Diplomacy/Tumble.  Don't need to say more.

Feats were a good addition to 3.0.  As was recently a game room discussion, they really could stand to be more with how rare they generally are.  Something that could build.  It's reasonably common to have to grab a feat between 12-20 that isn't in a tree and does genuinely map up well with the type of power option one should get there.  A minor bonus may be your best option which really doesn't map.  These really should be more defining trait type things.  Yes, it is harder to plan out, but overall the tree structure and setup as current has made retraining almost a necessity in the mechanics.  Which is silly, it shouldn't be so hard (or so build limiting) to make a decision early on (as a good half of the possible feats are gotten pretty quick).  This kind of stuff is part of why fighters have gotten pretty complicated compared to rogues.

Please, let monks not suck.  *waves, the big monk fan flag* Don't leave schools and flexible feats for them out for a splat book.  And don't make fighters fighter-mystics either!

Just a few thoughts

Dracos

[Ranma_007]

Our DM will not play 4.0 when it comes out (and I agree) because of the amount of money spent on 3.5 books.

There are a couple of videos on YouTube about 4.0...

[Dracos]

3.0 and 3.5 both combined to really create that kind of behavior.  I can definitely sympathize even though I didn't buy into 3.5, as the emphasis on expansions and things definitely ties you to it and unlike with consoles, it feels weird saying "Yeah, I'm never going to use these 3 shelves of books I bought for this again, time to spend another few hundred."

Admittingly, I think that's also the other way of looking at it: "I'm willing to buy a new video game system and new games for it, which doesn't necessarily invalidate my old one...even though its all the expenses all over again."

Personally?  My only large grudge was that 3.0->3.5 really muddied the water.  If you hand me a 1st edition or 2nd edition book, I can easily tell what it is meant to be played with.  This is often phenomenially unclear in 3.0->3.5.  It also resulted in unfortunate stuff falling through the cracks in not getting republished or editted (and of course, silly edits).

Yeah, keen is super powerful and we need to avoid jumping builds...

riight.

Dracos

[Anastasia]

Races? I'm glad their expanding the races. I also hope they make them deeper and some of the differences more pronounced. And be more common with downsides as well that aren't just a blink stat one. Half-orcs and halflings are they only ones that really have any noticeable seeming downsides (and of course there's hint that statistically, that doesn't matter much to a well thought out halfling). This doesn't mean each need side races or something, but less "this is human with two stat shifts and ...BONUSES?" I dunno, humans don't have it bad, persay, it's just could be a bit more.

They're talking about more racially based powers that effect the choice of race a lot more than the current game. This goes down into race bleeding into how your classes can function; I hope this helps spice those things up since I'm looking forward to it. Let's just hope it's done right and not a ballsup.

[Jon]

Diplomacy is broken, yes. Rich provides a house rule that I think is nifty, but I've not had a chance to use it yet. Improvements would be good.

On the other hand, I have no confidence that WotC will be able to pull this off without massive amounts of suck.

[Dracos]

Ana: I hope so.

Jon:
I remember that.  It's a complex fix to a seriously broken skill and while reasonable, is also fairly complicated and fixing one skill in a chunk.  Ideally I'd like to see a more wholistic approach, with that drawn in for diplomacy.

Dracos

[Anastasia]

I remember that.  It's a complex fix to a seriously broken skill and while reasonable, is also fairly complicated and fixing one skill in a chunk.  Ideally I'd like to see a more wholistic approach, with that drawn in for diplomacy.

Dracos

They could have hit dice play into it more, like intimidate? More of a consistent way overall of factoring in levels to the difficulty of a check?

[Dracos]

Levels get factored into too many checks as it stands, I think, which makes a few levels up in the same area usually overwhelming, but something better.  There's lots of ways to do it depending on how the skill systemis built.

Dracos

[Sunhawk]

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=349569

Thread on some things known.

EDIT:

* I like the idea of talent trees, myself
* Having racial talent trees and general level advancement makes race a lot more important choice-wise... and can help get rid of that cumbersome ECL bit.
* Weapon choice actually meaning something beyond a couple minor changes to damage and criticals... bonus!
* Having abilities be based on "at will", "per encounter" or "per day" is useful, I think.
* Magic Item Creation not needing experience... yes, yes, YES!
* Fewer classes, but with broad customizability looks to be central; I like this.
* 30 levels is nice; having the game fun at levels 1 and 2 is even nicer.
* Less importance of items... definitely good; I'd like to see items mostly give handy little tricks rather than outright bonuses to things... a ring of sustenance, warmth or invisibility, not a ring of +3 to Diplomacy checks.
* Changing the alignment system around a bit.

[Anastasia]

That looks good as long as they don't turn fighters into melee casters as the ToB did. If they only resort is to make warriors wizards with differently named magic called stances, I'm going to kill Wizards.

[Carthrat]

And I would leap to their defence.

Indeed, if they kept the whole shtick of fighters being able to do two things and only two things, that's when I'd start attacking throats. Make feats 100x better, give them stances and techniques (which, again, is not a necessarily eastern trait; see: diablo II), but don't just give them bigger and bigger numbers and call it fun, because it's not.

Edit: That said, I do like what I've seen so far. Differentiating weapons from each other seems like a good move to me, especially seeing as it's apparently a fighter-only shtick- we'll really have something for people who want to play swordmasters now. Also, word on the street is that spellcasting is intended to scale differently; apparently we can cast up to 25th-level spells or something.

But most people seem to think that this is more a reflection of having spells that scale in level themselves- somewhat reminscient of how psionics work. i.e., this is not simply cluttering everything up with another dozen spell lists.

[Anastasia]

And I would leap to their defence.

Indeed, if they kept the whole shtick of fighters being able to do two things and only two things, that's when I'd start attacking throats. Make feats 100x better, give them stances and techniques (which, again, is not a necessarily eastern trait; see: diablo II), but don't just give them bigger and bigger numbers and call it fun, because it's not.

The way it's been packaged and sold thus far in ToB(And ToB is the source cited by the 4th edition developers for inspiration) is entirely Eastern. Now, that could change, but this leaves me cold as it is. Why do you have to break down fighters into having lots of named spel-er, sorry, stances and powers? Can't we design a fighter that can hit things well without becoming a mage-alike in execution?

The problems with fighters aren't fixed with that, it's fixed with feats, skill rebalancing and some tweaks like you touched on otherwise. If that bores you, play another wizard and try not to make the other classes clones of them?

Edit: That said, I do like what I've seen so far. Differentiating weapons from each other seems like a good move to me, especially seeing as it's apparently a fighter-only shtick- we'll really have something for people who want to play swordmasters now. Also, word on the street is that spellcasting is intended to scale differently; apparently we can cast up to 25th-level spells or something.

But most people seem to think that this is more a reflection of having spells that scale in level themselves- somewhat reminscient of how psionics work. i.e., this is not simply cluttering everything up with another dozen spell lists.

Oh yeah, more weapon differences are always good. This is something that gets bandied around periodically in splat books and hype, but never is really delivered.

No real comment on the spell stuff. If they're completely reworking magic I'll simply wait and see what they're cooking up. There's so many directions they can go in.

[Dracos]

Completely seconded.

Making feats more meaningful, giving special fighter only stuff, etc?  Awesome.

Making a fighter class that is fighter/mage?  Fine.

Making the core fighter having tons of stances and things?  Not so much.

I'll even tack it at a different angle:

I generally like the fighter concept that is a few simple effective abilities that can be used anytime all the time.  I think it fills an important accessibility niche for D&D (ToB is not newbie accessible) which the other classes can be a bit much on.  A spell list is neat, but if I wanted that, I'd play a wizard.  Manuvers and stances are neat, but hey, as a monk fan?  Give me them there and stop neglecting the poor eastern fighter class you ALREADY HAVE.  Man, it ticked me off that 3.5 ate up schools and shit that really needed to be core for monks and added a lot to the feel of it.

Monks/Martial artists have schools, they have manuevers, etc.  They shoot ki-bolts from their hands, and split in two like an illusion.

Western Fighters have styles that are generally reflected in everything they do all the time.  They have "I spin my blade like this and I watch yours go flying off behind you before pointing my sword at your throat" rather than "Deceptive Turning Blade of Flowers".  They hack through armor, smash through walls, and tear across battlefields on mounts rather than leap 50 feet in the air.

They're generally less exotic and frankly, as far as most books go, less interesting to watch.  War having less of a performance art aspect to it in europe and the like is part of it.  That doesn't mean they're necessarily (or should be) less fun to play or need to be hyper complex.  In fairness, a set of general moves that really belong to fighters got put as standard combat moves for everyone and/or tied to bab in the old.

Making feats better, more interesting weapon usage, and a skills system that isn't retarded is a good step forward.  Inserting in the training concepts in ToB?  Cool.  Sword-(S)Mages?  Less so.

Dracos

[Sunhawk]

An interesting little tidbit from an sample round of combat versus a dragon (other than that older dragons are frickin' scary... free action to breathe fire, another free action to tail whip someone sneaking up, two attacks at 20' away with the claws, use a special ability to spit a fireball...); a cleric wields a halberd and gets a critical hit, which heals the party for a bit.

"Finally, the cleric is up. Calling on the power of her god, she swings her halberd at the dragon—a critical hit! The damage isn't bad, but even better, the wizard gets a nice surge of healing power." (from http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20070822a)

I really like this idea...

[Carthrat]

The problems with fighters aren't fixed with that, it's fixed with feats, skill rebalancing and some tweaks like you touched on otherwise. If that bores you, play another wizard and try not to make the other classes clones of them?

Fighters aren't really fixed with feats if you're looking at it from the 3e perspective. They're 'fixed' with fighter-special-abilities that are *cunningly disguised* as feats. The real problem with this method of approach is it makes it freaking difficult to compare fighter abilities to abilities of other classes... like... at all. You wind up having to rely on bizzare synergies between feats and other feats to get anywhere, and it's very hard to be able to say if this is more powerful or less powerful than some other classes things. In 3e, as it turns out, it was less powerful.

(For that matter, wrt skills, everyone knows the rogue is the 'skillful' class. But he has class-specific abilities that add a lot to his ability and role. In short, he doesn't rely only on skills- and the fighter shouldn't rely only on feats for his 'cool things'.)

Furthermore, feats are by definition things that any class can take, so the fighter loses a bit of it's individuality that way; it's not contributing anything some other class couldn't potentially contribute.

They're also just plain not exciting in play because they're such static characters. After doing chargen, there's no creativity left for the game.

There aren't many feats that give you a range of options; many involve some kind of passive mod to your abilities. The few that do grant new combat options are generally quite limited in scope and only situationally useful. You've mentioned fighters being good at the few things they do, i.e. fighting, but we don't really want to reduce them to a one-trick-pony in combat, do we? It's pointedly boring to only have one option in a fight.

To put it simply, it's way easier to come up with special abilities and the like usable by fighters only than trying to package their abilities in some kind of universal system.

However, you've said you're supportive of fighter-only specials and stuff. I don't get why calling them manuevers would be a 'bad' thing. Seriously, is the only thing hated about them the way you 'expend' uses of them, ala spells? Recovery mechanics not do it for you, I guess? I can symphasize with that. I'm willing to accept this sort of thing in the name of system cohesion; it's much easier to devise a universal system for all classes and then have the actual *abilities* differentiate the groups. (Once again, see: Diablo II.)

Drac's mentioned in the same post that 'eastern' fighters are differentiated from 'western' fighters pretty much solely by the names of their moves. He's given examples of different abilities characteristic of the classes, e.g. eastern fighters seeming to shoot ki-bolts or using shadow clones (representative of exactly two of the ToB schools, btw) and having western fighters... smash through walls and hit things really hard. Hit things *really hard*. They're blatantly superhuman.. in some kind of.. I dunno, western-comic-book way? At the risk of setting up a straw man, I'll say that they're no more part of classical, 'D&Desque' fantasy than dudes shooting fire from swords. And, if they are, dudes in asian martial arts cinema do this *all the time*. It's yet more of the dreaded eastern flavour.

Finally- and this is more of a personal gripe than part of the above- even if the 'inspiration' for ToB was eastern in nature, I'm going to argue that the warblade, as a class, pretty much does everything you want the classic 'western' fighter you seem to be talking about to want. In terms of flavour, they can smash through walls, which I admit is somewhat supernatural (but we don't mind this, apparently, because fighters are already superhuman at such high levels, what with the wading through lava and everything). They can ride horses. They can yell battle cries to inspire the men. You can totally ignore any kind of mysticism behind it (and the warblade class desc itself doesn't seem exactly given to mysticism).

They can disarm people with a technique, too, and it's called... 'disarming strike'. Other people can disarm, but they can use this to disarm *better* in a way that cannot be matched by other classes no matter what.

And that's something I'd like to see in 4e- a clear differentiation of abilities, as opposed to writing up one class based on one design paradigm, and another based on a different one, and then hoping it all turns out okay.