Ask the Guy Who's Seen DnD 4th Edition

The Game Room
101

[qyuote]Wait, you’re a WoD/Exalted player and you’re in here discussing Fourth Edition D&D?

NOW I GET IT.

This is the roleplaying equivalent of a Mac vs. PC discussion! For a little while there, it kinda sounded like you were debating the merits of 4E vs some previous version of D&D. You just don’t like D&D.
[/quote]

Actually, I’m on the run from WoD. I… just can’t take it any more. The emo, it burns! I mean, seriously, the frickin Exalted world has roughyl 5-10 times the landmass of earth! How the frack am I supposed to even get to the next bloody city?! It’s equivalent to being in New York and wanting to ge to LA… on foot!

Ahem

Curretly, I’m a Legend of the Five Rings player. Lo5R is another game with a good core idea which goes way over the top. Sadly, their design writers edited the book so badly that chapters blatantly contradict each other, and to this very day, it has never been clear what the rules are.

102

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
ARE the books officially out yet? I tried going to Barnes and noble yesterday and they didn’t have them.
[/QUOTE]

Official street date was the 6th. Buy.com violated that, and I’ve read lots of reports of local shops putting 'em out on the shelves early, too (Books a Million seems to have that habit all over).

I think, as much stuff as they crammed in to these books, that it still seems like a lot is missing. Flipping through the MM there aren’t many aquatic monsters at all, not even some of the D&D classics. There don’t seem to be a lot of Feat choices, all in all, and all the classes definately could use more Power choices – particularly at the higher levels.

103

I’m still torn over the inclusions of Tieflings. I have no use for the Dragonpeeps.

I like Tieflings. I think they’re cute. I want to have a stuffed Tiefling doll with buttons for eyes and take it to games and insist that peple treat it like a member of the party. I’m a huge Tiefling fanboy.

But, even for DnD, I have a hard time accepting that from now on, all worlds have Tieflings in them as a base rule unless specifically excempted. And they are so common as to have their own culture and cultural artifacts (not magicla artifacts, just their own styles of stuff). This is no longer a “generic” fantasy.

Thoughts?

104

D&D never was “generic” fantasy. It has always been its own genre. It’s just that its genre tropes have infected other fantasy set-ups, and make you think that is what “generic” is.

Elves, and dwarves, and halflings are not “generic” fantasy. And in D&D, they’re not even Tolkien-fantasy.

The default for D&D has been that all game worlds have bulettes and rust monsters in them as a general rule, too. I’ve always ignored that, because I had those crappy little plastic toys that came with my dinosaurs, and it’s just wrong having them in D&D. So they’re not in my worlds.

Also, quite a few of the D&D campaign settings customize their races, or exclude some altogether. It’s just the default “non-setting” where tieflings are default (and kitchen sink settings like Forgotten Realms and Eberron, presumably). BTW, the expanded Warforged are up on the Dragon site… and their history slots them into the default non-setting background as well. So apparently they are to be considered default in, as well.

(cue the Internet fanboys ranting about someone getting robots in their generic fantasy, I guess)

105

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
… Will healing surges come across as cheesy or awesome?

[/QUOTE]

So are you saying it is geared toward healing during combat, instead of traditionally recovering after the battles?

106

[QUOTE=GargoyleWB]
So are you saying it is geared toward healing during combat, instead of traditionally recovering after the battles?
[/QUOTE]

If you need it. Although the healing classes have some extremely cheezy mass heal effects which don’t even require them to stop attacking. Then again, the monsters have a lot of hit points now, so…

107

[QUOTE=GargoyleWB]
So are you saying it is geared toward healing during combat, instead of traditionally recovering after the battles?
[/QUOTE]

As I understand it, once during each encounter you can heal 1/4 your hit point total without any outside help. I’m not sure whether it takes a standard action or a minor action or what (that is, does it mean you don’t get to attack for a round, or can you attack in the same round?) This is called taking your second wind. You can also heal yourself outside of combat as much as you want, 1/4 of your HP total at a time.

Except for this limitation: both types of healing are limited by the requirement to spend a healing surge each time you want to do it, and you get a limited number of these surges each day. I think the number will typically range between 6-16, depending on your CON score and your class, although I’ll need to look closer to get the actual number.

Healing classes can help allies heal during combat without taking their second wind; they also help them heal slightly better than 1/4 their HP total. Clerics are healers; so are paladins; so, interestingly, are warlords.

I’ve not seen anything cheesy with healing powers. I’ll wait to form such an assessment until I hear from someone who’s playtested the rules with a functional gaming group.

Daniel

108

What I’ve seen of healing surges seems a touch clunky, but I’ll admit I haven’t investigated it in-depth. It seems like a hack so that parties need not necessarily have a cleric or a cleric-on-a-stick in order to survive.

109

So I’ve gotten all three sourcebooks out for 4th Ed today and plan to read them cover to cover and maybe make a sample adventure for my friends so we have some field testing (I also have a premade adventure if I get lazy).

Someone asked about encounters, and though it’s been answered I thought I’d post the exact section from the PH.

“Encounters come in two types.
[ul][li]Combat Encounters are battles against nefarious foes. In a combat encounter, characters and monsters take turns attacking until one side or the other is defeated.[/li][li]Noncombat Encounters include deadly traps, difficult puzzles, and other obstacles to overcome. Sometimes you overcome noncombat encounters by using your character’s skills, sometimes you can defeat them with clever uses of magic, and sometimes you have to puzzle them out with nothing but your wits. Noncombat encounters also include social interactions, such as attempts to persuade, bargain with, or obtain information from a nonplayer character (NPC) controlled by the DM. Whenever you decide that your character wants to talk to a person or monster, it’s a noncombat encounter.”[/ul][/li]
So basically anything other than standing around farting or walking two tiles forward is an encounter. YOU FINISHED READING MY POST, ENCOUNTER SUCCESSFUL!!!

110

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Another amusing bit: remember how it used to be a joke that people would jut mark “II” after their character’s name when he died? Well, that’s now a standard rule the player can use. Down to keeping his magic items. :smiley:
[/quote]

This is patently false. Lemme quote from page 30 of the DMG:

First, that’s not a rule, that’s a guideline. Second, it suggests that doing this has some serious downsides. It only implies it might be okay if you have a nonserious game.

How on earth did you get from this that adding “II” after a character’s name is a “standard rule”?

Daniel

111

So I’m diggint rhough the PHB. Wizards of course is my first stop :slight_smile:

Am I reading this right? Wizards do not prepare spells anymore? They appear to be more like 3.x sorcerers, able to deploy whatever at will/encounter/daily/ritual power they want as longas they know it?

Also, it seems there are no “normal” standard attacks for fighters as there is not reason not to use their at will powers everytime they attack.

And only one attack per round, right? I see no mention of multiple attacks… Anyone find dual-wielding rules anywhere? I suppose I should read it from cover to cover…

Oh, where is the character creator/online dungeon creator for D&d insider?

112

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
Am I reading this right? Wizards do not prepare spells anymore? They appear to be more like 3.x sorcerers, able to deploy whatever at will/encounter/daily/ritual power they want as longas they know it?
[/quote]

Well…sort of. Look at page 158:

So you still prepare spells, but your selection is going to be much more limited. Which makes sense, since wizard spells are in general much more limited (to make room for the spell-like powers of other classes). As near as I can tell so far, you can’t copy spells into your spellbook from other sources.

Check the basic attack rules on page 287. You’re right, though, that you usually won’t use these; they’ll mostly come up as opportunity attacks, or as a result of some other power (yours or an ally’s) that allows you to make a basic attack. There’s no reason that I can see ever to use a basic attack when you can choose to use an exploit instead.

Normally dual-wielding gives you only the advantage of choosing which weapon to attack with each round. Rangers, however, can use the “Twin Strike” power on page 105 to make two attacks. It’s a first-level at-will power, allowing an attack with two melee weapons or a ranged weapon. There are other ranger powers that give you the ability to do cool dual-wielding stuff: for example, Dire Wolverine strike is a first-level encounter exploit allowing you to duplicate the effects of the 3E Whirlwind feat, as a standard action. Other classes have silar stuff: rogues can choose Blinding Barrage, a level 1 daily exploit that allows them to ranged-weapon attack every enemy within 3 squares of them, doing double damge and blinding them.

And remember that all damage-dealing effects are now attacks. When a wizard casts the 1st-level at will spell Fireburst, that’s going to equate to multiple attacks.

AFAICT, there is no way at all to perform multiple attacks with a basic melee attack, however: there’s no equivalent to iterative attacks in 4e.

Daniel

113

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
Also, it seems there are no “normal” standard attacks for fighters as there is not reason not to use their at will powers everytime they attack.
[/QUOTE]

That seems to be a standard confused response, but it’s like this;

Your “normal” standard attacks ARE your At-Will powers.

Given that there are a very limited number of At-Will powers per class, and you know two of them (three if Human), you’re generally going to know all of the ones that are useful for your character, and these constitute the standard attack actions for your character. Your Encounter, Daily and Utility powers are your “special” attacks.

There are no multiple attacks, and dual wielding only causes additional damage. It’s supposed to reduce the number of attack rolls, but frankly, I really liked iterative attacks for the ability to mow through mooks and groups. Instead, there are attacks that do damage to additional adjacent creatures (“Cleave”) and attacks that damage all in a burst (ala 3e Whirlwind), but these generally do smaller amounts of damage to those secondary targets. (Really, it’s a trade off. In 3e, you hit, then cleave for a chance to hit another enemy for full damage; or you make an iterative attack at a lower chance to hit. In 4e, you hit, then automatically do additional (but smaller) damage to adjacent enemies.)

114

[QUOTE=Chimera]
Your “normal” standard attacks ARE your At-Will powers.
…
There are no multiple attacks, and dual wielding only causes additional damage.
[/QUOTE]

Check my post right above yours; neither of these statements are exactly correct.

Daniel

115

Thanks for the clarification. Another reason to love this board.

Hmmm, it looks like a lot of powers/spells only last 1 turn. Shield for example can only be used once per encounter and only against a single attack. Invisibility requires sustain effort as well, and improved invisibility seems to only increase range. No more attacking while remaining invisible! More suprising is the fact that you can’t “memorize” any one power more than once. So you can’t use fireball twice, only once per encounter/day. The rest of time I guess we have to manage with at will powers. Interesting.

It’s ironic that this new ruleset having taken so much inspiration from video games is probably even more difficult to bring into a video gamign arena. I can’t imagine how NWN 3 (if they were to make it) could implement all of this outside a strict turn based game.

116

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
Hmmm, it looks like a lot of powers/spells only last 1 turn. Shield for example can only be used once per encounter and only against a single attack. Invisibility requires sustain effort as well, and improved invisibility seems to only increase range. No more attacking while remaining invisible! More suprising is the fact that you can’t “memorize” any one power more than once. So you can’t use fireball twice, only once per encounter/day. The rest of time I guess we have to manage with at will powers. Interesting.
[/QUOTE]

It is interesting to think about, and it’s one of the things I’ll want to see how it works in play.

Look at a 5th-level wizard. By 5th-level, you’ll have one utility power, two encounter powers, and two daily powers, in addition to your at-will powers. Let’s say you love the pyromaniac wizard archetype. You could have:
Daily 5: Fireball
Daily 1: Flaming Sphere
Encounter 3: Fire Shroud
Encounter 1: Icy Terrain (you want a little bit of ability to do something besides fire, after all)
Utility 2: Shield (actually an encounter power)
At-will 1: Scorching Burst
At-will 2: Thunderwave

So in every combat, you could start off by icy-terraining the enemies at a distance, damaging them and giving your buddies a chance to get into advantageous positions. Round 2, you can fire shroud them, starting some fun ongoing damage for them (doing 1d8+5+Int to each enemy you hit, in an area the same size as a fireball). Round 3, you could do one of your dailies: you might choose flaming sphere in order to have something fun to do until the end of combat. Round 4-5, you might continue devoting all your energy to the flaming sphere (minor to sustain it, move to get it into a new position, and standard to attack with it). In the middle of an opponent’s turn, you throw up the shield to fend off an attack. Round 6, you might decide to sustain the sphere, but shoot off a thunderwave to knock back those jerks who’ve moved in close to attack you–oh, and look, your flaming sphere is close enough that you can push two of the monsters back to stand next to it using your thunderwave! Round 7, you attack one of the enemies again with the flaming sphere. Round 8 you’re hurt: it’s time to use a second wind (p 291) to regain 1/4 of your HP and +2 to all defenses till the end of your next turn. Round 9, another flaming sphere attack, and all the enemies are down.

With that example, you’ve used up half of your daily powers. You’ve done the same thing for five rounds (attacked with the flaming sphere daily power), and done something completely different for each of the other 4 rounds. And you’ve used up one of your 6 or more healing surges for the day.

If you chose a different daily power–e.g., you started the fight off with the fireball–things would look different. You might use scorching burst several times, for example.

But it looks to me, at least from this totally off-the-cuff example, as if you’ll not miss the multiple fireballs too much; it looks as though you’ll always have something to do.

One thing I just realized is that, while attacks do less damage and enemies have more hit points, it’s now a lot easier to hit multiple enemies with a single action. If multiple combatants are hitting the same multiple group of enemies with attacks each round, it might whittle those HP down very quickly.

I really can’t wait to try out the combat rules!

Daniel

117

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
But I’ve also caught some of the DMG rules from a friend, and there are some issues there as well. The monsters are supposed to ignore downed players - specifically so those players can get back up. The monnsters could hit them again and kill them, but that wouldn’t be fun, so the monsters leave downed PC’s alone. Blink
[/QUOTE]

Again, utter nonsense. Under the heading “Running Combat” on page 40 is the following advice:

(emphasis added)

So note:
-This is not under a rules section; this is a set of tips.
-The word “usually” is in place, and it’s completely sensible: most opponents are going to focus their attention on the characters who present a threat, not on the ones who are downed.
-It makes allowances for some situations in which a downed PC might be attacked anyway. There’s nothing to indicate that this is a comprehensive list.

There’s also the following passage on p 295 of the PHB:

Again, I think you’ve got some serious distortions of the rules going on. You might want to go back and read them a little more charitably before offering your judgment.

Daniel

118

Left Hand Your wizard example is got me itching to play my wizard! Must. resist. urge. to stop work. and play…

119

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Check my post right above yours; neither of these statements are exactly correct.
[/QUOTE]

I’d consider that we’re both correct on the first one. Sure, there is a basic melee attack, but as you say, it’s pretty much only going to be used as an Opportunity attack. It makes more sense to say that your At-Wills are your Standard attacks in answer to people who state;

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
Also, it seems there are no “normal” standard attacks for fighters as there is not reason not to use their at will powers everytime they attack.
[/QUOTE]

On the second one, I stand corrected. I hadn’t looked over the Ranger yet.

120

[QUOTE=Chimera]
I’d consider that we’re both correct on the first one. Sure, there is a basic melee attack, but as you say, it’s pretty much only going to be used as an Opportunity attack. It makes more sense to say that your At-Wills are your Standard attacks in answer to people who state;
[/QUOTE]

Fair enough. I had been curious myself to see whether there was a vanilla way to attack someone with a sword, and I wanted to show Kinthalis where those rules were in case he hadn’t seen them.

Daniel