D&D 4th Edition Leaked

[Alleya]

I don't see how 4E alienates role-players. The whole fucking idea of pnp is that you're not dealing with a static system. A group of people shapes the experience they want to have. The rulebooks are just guidelines.

[BRP]

I can't really say 4e(or 3e... especially 3e...) discourages roleplaying. I can't agree with people saying this. In fact 4e's problems are only technical based.

If I were to describe its problem it would be "Creative Limitation". The d20 system(which 3e introduced) gave you a lot of power in your hands, it felt you could do anything. You felt like a game designer with your house rules and it was easy. 4e does seem to be based on a tactical war game and built to be a balanced one at that. I don't think anything can show the difference more than multiclassing. In 3e, you simply took a level of that other class. In 4e, you force that some of that class's power/archetype/mold into your class's mold using feats. If I were to say it in a phrase (and probably incorrectly) "3e is a complex game based on a simple design, 4e is a simple game based on a complex design". Things will change as some more talented parties are able to make more homebrew and Wizards release more supplements.

4e does help a lot though. Level+14 3e was shitty no matter how you cut it. Class balance did not exist. It was Wizards and Clerics throwing around "Do-Anything" spells. Rogues and Fighters did their best to keep up by trying to force as much damage out as possible with (only) Sneak Attack and Power Attack(hurr, two-handed weapons + floating shield). And worst of all? None it made sense. The fight was about remembering literally +20 spells as everyone struggles with oddball flying mechanics(yeah, everyone fucking flying all the time, cool). Sure fun to roleplay in situations where you only need to cast a spell to get the absolute truth or can just see where your villain is at with a crystal ball, teleport there, and kill them. Sure you can be corned into fighting only super-wizards, dragons, and gods who constantly have protections from broken tactics... but this isn't DBZ or Bleach. The plot should not be based on the metagame.

DnD levels 3-8(5-6 being the prime I say) is great because the game makes sense. Sure, clerics were still powerhouses and Wizards still had some hax-spells, but neither were gods. And things for the most part were simpler(Grappling being the most confusing part of course).

4e tries to extend that certain feeling for much longer(also fixing the deathfest that was level 1). I'm not sure how far it exceeds, but I can already see myself going to the late teens. I could even see the prime being at/ending at level 11. You can't help but appreciate that everything outside class/power is downright better. But then maybe you can say with d20, you didn't need an edition for that.

Also, fuck, I keep on writing job instead of class.

EDIT: I know 4e has "Everyone flying lol!" spells. It was just an example. I don't plan on playing at those levels anyway.

EDIT 2: I should also mention most high-level fights in 3e were one-sided blowouts. Initiative = victory. The fact melee actually means something now could at least slow this down a bit. I'll have to explore it more.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Role playing is about transcending the system you're using and adding the human factor. It makes sense that the combat is defined by the mechanics and the role playing is determined by the group.

[Darus Grey]

I don't see how 4E alienates role-players. The whole fucking idea of pnp is that you're not dealing with a static system. A group of people shapes the experience they want to have. The rulebooks are just guidelines.

The system determines the player. It's hard to role-play when you have 4 people telling you to "Shut up, you're slowing us down", because that's the type of player the system attract, and when you seek out a game, it's more likely to be filled with people like that.

If you've never experienced that, then you are fortunate and should realize you are the exception now.

Good groups will still be good groups, but getting together a role-playing focused game becomes significantly harder when the system discourages it. You don't see a very vibrant warhammer or mechwarrior PNP scene(even though it certainly exists), because even though the guidelines are there, it's still fitting a square peg in a round hole.

[izembo]

im a vet and i dont really see anything wrong with the change, if they make a new version it should be different, something else to play, if i wanted the other rules i'd just run a 3.5 campaign

[Not Kuno]

im a vet and i dont really see anything wrong with the change, if they make a new version it should be different, something else to play, if i wanted the other rules i'd just run a 3.5 campaign

More or less, yeah. This isn't FFXI where if SE decides to randomly changes the game around you're forced to do it. The changes sound cool and I think most of my old DnD friends will like them as well.

[Colm]

I started a campaign as a PC with some friends who play (and used to play FFXI). Combat is pretty fun so far. Using your at-will abilities all the time is important to making combat easier, there's no real point to basic attacks except for AoO's. It's nice having a bunch of different options, even at level 1. Unfortunately, we couldn't get much done since one of our players lives in Holland and fell asleep at 2:00AM his time. >_>

How did you play onlineeee?

We used OpenRPG. It's fairly intuitive, in that you can do up your character sheet then plug key values like saving throws into a sheet, then send it to your DM. That way, everything is at their fingertips rather than having to rifle through PDFs or HTML files. It's also much nicer because you can visualize combat and use the environment. For instance, the rogue in our group used some trees for cover, then did Sly Flourish + Sneak Attack + Coup de Grace and one-hit a Dragonshield at level 1.

Sleep is also a bomb-ass spell, it makes big fights much easier.

[Maguspk]

Who's up for this, I have never played before so I can't DM. Anyone here with a knack for creativity and an urge for some RPG?

[BRP]

Who's up for this, I have never played before so I can't DM. Anyone here with a knack for creativity and an urge for some RPG?

Maybe in a month or so.

[izembo]

so this comes out today, anyone found a place with it in stock yet and pick it up?

[Makenshin]

I just got back from my first 4th edition session. The whole session was done at lvl 1. Herer are my comments about it.

I don't know if it's because we were all still new but, the battles took looooong to do. I am hoping that it was just because we are all noobs in 4th edition, i am nervous about the battles being long in later levels. Our fights did always have a lot of enemies, like the first battle had like 7 enemies and the second battle had like 16 or more enemies. I just want to know if anyone has any tips to decrease battle time, I love to role play and don't just want to do long battles.

All of the melee abilities were awesome to do, I was a wizard and I loved being able to actually do damage without using up a spell slot. The enemies had abilities to which also made it more fun. The battles were much more strategic which I loved. The classes actually did their roles, like DD, tank, healer. I know some don't like that, but I love the idea of their being roles for party members.

So far, I think 4th edition was an improvement, I hope my worries are for nothing. This edition definately has potential though.

[Kaylia]

Look at monster's hp and your dmg at higher level, fight are always going to be long. Having to refer to the manual every 2 seconds doesnt help, but most fight should last at least 6-7rounds and more. I'm pretty sure a round wont be much longer than it was before once I get used to the rule tho.

Personally, I like it better this way. It will allow me to have more interaction during the fight and add more gimmick. I don't know how many time my npc got one shotted before he activated a trigger, or said something to the players.

The only problem right now is the experiences point given..it feels way too slow, especially since the fight last more than 2 rounds now. I'm probably going to go for a "x2 xp, x2 money" custom rules, because we will never reach 10 at this rate.

Also, is there any way to flee now? If you're near a defender (warrior), it's almost impossible to flee away from the fight with all their move. I kinda miss the "free move" + "double movement" in this situation.

[Darus Grey]

I don't know if it's because we were all still new but, the battles took looooong to do. I am hoping that it was just because we are all noobs in 4th edition,

Sadly no, In my own campaign we started several months ago, 1-14 so far and battles are always slow...always long...and only get longer. As I said, 4th edition is a tactical miniature game. If you get into a serious fight that's pretty much your whole night.

Also, is there any way to flee now? If you're near a defender (warrior), it's almost impossible to flee away from the fight with all their move. I kinda miss the "free move" + "double movement" in this situation.

Yes, you have to break away(there's still a full withdrawl action equivalent) and then do a full run(i.e. not your standard 6ish squares)

[izembo]

got my books and im really looking forward to giving it a try once i can, still got a couple of weeks left till i can try it i think though.

[Makenshin]

I was hoping the battles became shorter. I don't want the battles to be so long that we have less time to roleplay. I guess this only means it will take more sessions to compelte the campaign.

[Colm]

Battles do start to go faster once you become more familiar with how the powes work and such. It may also depend on the type of campaign. In mine, our party was sent to infiltrate and destabilize an enemy nation, so I'm not expecting huge battles.

[BRP]

I don't know how anyone can call it an improvement, it's mostly a side step. It's a very different game and not really a straight update. I could see something evolving out of 1e(which was based on a wargame), not so much 3e. Though, that's not really bad. I'm just going to play both Pathfinder(Paizo's 3.75) and 4e. Probably more PF than 4e though.

My biggest complaint would be how utterly empty the PHB felt and how little we are getting this year from Wizards(Forgotten Realms will probably have a good amount of content though, comes with a new class a mage/fighter). Necromancer games is releasing a good PHB this fall though.

So I'll probably be in or run a game soon, but I feel creatively limited right now. Probably won't make a homebrew setting or adventures for at least a year or two.



I'm thinking of running a game on the messageboards. These games are very, very slow(2-3 rounds a day at most) and take very long to complete(year for a small adventure). So they are meant to be casual based. They will give a good taste of the mechanics though.

[Maxxthepenguin]

One thing you may not have picked up: The city of Sigil is in. Has planescape been absorbed into the standard setting/

[BRP]

Wait, Sigil? I hope not, because they threw out the Great Wheel. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised. They made a whole damn magical continent reappear in FR because they wanted to include those (lame) new races from the PHB. I could see changing the setting to fit magical mechanics, but why in god's name would you treat the realms like Eberron(everything must be fit). Races, deities, and such are basically fluff with crunch rather than pure crunch. They can be changed and ignored(well in this edition, deities are pure fluff).

Anyway, DDI looks pretty meh, but they released awesome dragon articles that may change my mind. They converted Warforged from Eberron into 4e quite nicely.

[Parshias]

I just got back from my first 4th edition session. The whole session was done at lvl 1. Herer are my comments about it.

I don't know if it's because we were all still new but, the battles took looooong to do. I am hoping that it was just because we are all noobs in 4th edition, i am nervous about the battles being long in later levels. Our fights did always have a lot of enemies, like the first battle had like 7 enemies and the second battle had like 16 or more enemies. I just want to know if anyone has any tips to decrease battle time, I love to role play and don't just want to do long battles.

All of the melee abilities were awesome to do, I was a wizard and I loved being able to actually do damage without using up a spell slot. The enemies had abilities to which also made it more fun. The battles were much more strategic which I loved. The classes actually did their roles, like DD, tank, healer. I know some don't like that, but I love the idea of their being roles for party members.

So far, I think 4th edition was an improvement, I hope my worries are for nothing. This edition definately has potential though.

That's probably your problem. Just browsing through the MM, I see that most sample encounters have at most about 6-7 enemies. While the 16 enemy encounter was probably balanced and went by the suggested encounter rules, having that many enemies is just asking for a long, drawn out encounter. If the DM is taking 10 minutes just to decide what every enemy is going to do, that's a problem.

Battles can also become drawn out if everyone is taking their time. I play 3.5 with a rather large group (7-9 people, not including the DM) and battle can take forever as we all go through each of our turns, asking for more information, planning our moves or placing spells and other things. So a smaller, more focused group would probably be faster.

And of course, everyone is not familiar with the rules. Battles in DnD aren't necessarily supposed to be incredibly short. Sure, some fights in 3.5 were short, but that's because the system had some balance issues, so certain characters could just steamroll over encounters. If you'd like to focus more on roleplay, then just tell your DM about it. Limit encounters down to just one or two and award exp and treasure for achieving things through roleplay.

And on another note, officially picked up the books today, even though I've been reading through them since they've been leaked, and have plans for a session next week with about 5 players. Have a almost battle-centric little romp planned, as that's what my friends seem to enjoy the most, but I've tried to expand it a bit past "here's a dungeon, go nuts!" It should turn out pretty well, although I have my reservations about the final encounter, as I hear reports that the encounter level system is still not totally accurate for some monsters.