[X] My Assistant

[Fortune]

So for you who already have the new PHB, did it come with some special dndinsider website with extra support? The main site talks about a character builder, character visualizer, and some other stuff but none of it is working yet.

Nope! You have to pay extra for all that crap. I think it's around $15 US per month or so.

[FrankTrollman]

Good news. The rules do not get in the way of the story.

This is true. The rules in fact scarcely interact with the story.

While the rules say that you can use Diplomacy to influence the attitude of NPCs, there are literally no rules for that anywhere. The actual "rule" is:

A Diplomacy check is made against a DC set by the DM. The target’s general attitude toward you (friendly
or unfriendly, peaceful or hostile) and other conditional modifiers (such as what you might be seeking to accomplish or what you’re asking for) might apply to the DC. Diplomacy is usually used in a skill challenge that requires a number of successes, but the DM might call for a Diplomacy check in other situations.

That's it. That's the whole rule. There are no sample DCs in the DMG for convincing a "hostile" or "unfriendly" NPC to do something or anything. In fact, the only guidelines in the book for setting skill DCs for anything at all are based on the power of the character performing the action. So apparently as you get higher level your Diplomacy modifier raises, but the assumed DCs to accomplish the same tasks raise by the same amount, so really nothing whatever has changed.

The DM "might" let you make a Diplomacy check and he "might" choose to set a DC that is something you could achieve and he "might" allow your proposal or the situation to have any bearing on any of this. Basically whether you have a Diplomacy modifier or not, your attempts to convince NPCs to do or believe anything are essentially just an extended game of Magical Teaparty or Cops and Robbers. Non-combat interactions are so "rules light" that they may as well be diceless. You have numbers on your sheet for Diplomacy, but those numbers don't mean anything at all.

-Frank

[Dumori]

I hate the way D&D 4e has become you want to do something out of combat *shug* ok then. No rules no skills my crfting chars are just useless and I've heard gnomes have gone. those two thing have lost the system to me. then the warforged in FR how why they'll need a bloody good reason why because just playing the city of shade card wont work.

[imperialus]

Well in a lot of ways that's also a return to older editions. 1st ed didn't even have Non Weapon Proficiencies. If your character wanted to lead the peasants in an Army of Darkness style training montage, good luck. Non Weapon Proficiencies in 2nd ed were a half baked afterthought. 3rd edition had a much more developed skill system but most classes had so few skill points I think I could count on one hand the number of PC's I saw with more than a rank or two in any crafting skill. I agree the diplomacy/human relations aspect of 4E is lacking but then again D&D has at it's core always been a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff. Groups who developed highly involved political campaigns regardless of edition have done so despite the system, not because of it.

I'm curious to hear what you mean by 'crafting chars'? Did you seriously develop PC's that focused on blacksmithing, basket weaving or other tradeskills? If that's the direction you want the game to take I can't imagine it's too difficult to add a few new skills to create your vision. You're probably a fairly small minority though so I can see why WoTC didn't devote much space in the core books to it.

Gnomes are in the Monstrous Manual with rules for how to make them PC's. So not gone, just not a 'core' race. Warforged I agree with, but unless I end up with a player who desperately wants to play a steampunk robot they're easy enough to ignore. Right now the only PC writeup they have is in a web supplement (that incidentally is available for free).

D&D has never been about anything but combat, and I kinda like it that way. Does it suit every possible campaign? Not at all, but if I want to play some heavy political game chronicling the rise of the PC's from minor noblemen to some of the most influential peers in the kingdom with a little bit of combat to spice things up I'd run Burning Wheel. The system is designed with that in mind. On the flip side, if I wanted to run a combat heavy 'save the kingdom from invading X' with a strong dose of politics in the background I'd run D&D. It can handle the politics well enough to add flavor and the combat system is (imo) a million times better than BW.

[imperialus]

Nope! You have to pay extra for all that crap. I think it's around $15 US per month or so.

I agree this is the most disappointing aspect of the new edition. I had great hopes for D&D insider, the virtual tabletop, and stuff like that. My gaming group has had a few members scatter across the globe so it would give us a chance to get everyone together again. D&D insider will be running an open Beta until the end of July however so you will have a chance to 'try before you buy' and the PHB, comes packaged with a code that gives you a free 10 day subscription.

Two big problems with insider (as of yesterday when I last checked)

1) There is nothing up yet. Last Friday, biggest day to hit D&D since 3rd edition and D&D insider is nothing but a splash page. Colour me disappointed. If it doesn't get sorted right quick they'll be loosing my business.

2) 15 dollars/mo (or 120 a year) is a stupid price point.* This gets you access to Dungeon and Dragon magazines, their V-tabletop, character builder, character visualizer, and dungeon designer. The software I could see getting packaged for around 60 bucks for everything, I'd pay that. As for the web-zines, someone on the Wizard boards posted a breakdown of the cost to get the most popular print magazines delivered to your door every month (or once a week) for a year. A 120 dollar DDI subscription would get you (I think) 11 of the 12 most popular print magazines in the US. The average cost was something like 2 bucks an issue. So if the DDI gets us two magazines online I'd expect to pay max 4 bucks for them. Even if we tack on a few extra bucks a month for the cost of Wizards maintaining their servers for the V-Tabletop, it's not like they're running something on the scale of WoW. There is no reason their servers should cost so much. For the service they are providing I think that a one time payment of 60 bucks for the software and 6 bucks a month is reasonable. Unless the price point gets dealt with I'm afraid they won't be getting my business either.

*There are rumors that this 15 dollars a month will mean that you also get access to PDF's/online versions of all the books as they are released. That would probably convince me that it's worth it. I have a lot of 3.X books that I like a single class/race/monster whatever from and having access to a PDF version would save me needing to buy the whole book if I'm only using a dozen pages from it.

[Fabe]

. And don't even get me started on Tieflings and Warlocks. How many years did we Rp'ers spend trying to convince family that we weren't dealing with demons? Thanks a hell of a lot WoTC.

Your talking as if that attitude has changed ,well it hasn't there as still plenty of folks who still think D&D is the spawn of the devil. Having or not having Tieflings and warlocks aren't going to have any real affect on peoples misconception of RPGs. Besides this isn't the 80s no one pays any attention the Pat Pullings of world any more.

[Wounded Ronin]

Besides this isn't the 80s no one pays any attention the Pat Pullings of world any more.

Yeah, nobody believes in the devil anymore. We never see the influence of such thinking in American politics.

[Fabe]

Yeah, nobody believes in the devil anymore. We never see the influence of such thinking in American politics.

Well OK people still believe in the devil and like to blame every thing they don't like on him I'll admit that. But I still feel that anti gaming advocates like Patricta Pulling aren't given as much attention as they were in the 80s durning the hight of the anti D&D hysteria.

[Dumori]

@ imperialus by crafting chars I mean my warforged aritifcer (im not against warforged they juts don't fit in FR) who in the time the rest of that party resting fixes their gear and works on magic items and builds his own weapons. He has at second level 4 ranks in all related crafting skill and still fits in to his role in the party with no fuss.

Extra rules could fix the problem but i also dislike the way DCs scale with level so your really playing the same game as at level 2 when your at level 30. These rules make the game seam very unrealsitc as in my current 5.3 game
we're often pitted again much much weaker or stronger foes. This lead the game to feel real as there is no sense in everything being the same challenge.

As I dont own any of the books and are going off what I've been told and read some thing may be doable. By limiting most rules to combat and giving no or few examples of the none-combat ones the game lack the third dimension as all interaction is up to the GM full stop.

[Kyoto Kid]

...after slugging through this thread (BTW, what is it's total CR, maybe I can make level (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) ) looks like I'm staying with 3.5. Never got into the MMORPG style of play and don't intend to either. I like it when wizards, sorcerers, and clerics have to manage their spells, that means the NPC oppos have do the same.

...and fighters, boring...? meh...it's what you put into them personality wise that makes them interesting.

[apollo124]

(Leaning on wood cane) "Why, back in my day sonny, back in the '80's we only had the second edition, and we liked it! Golems was something the evil wizard had, demons was what we fought, and dang it, the castles stayed where they was all the time! "(spits into spittoon)

And as far as Devil May Cry goes, well obviously you should kill ugly demons. I know standards have changed. Hell, I love playing Diablo, and with all the inverted pentacles and demons in that game, you never heard much of anything about it from the Evangelist crowd.

[Larme]

I got a chance to play too. And despite the radical restructuring of the system, it plays like the exact same game, only faster and more interesting. Fighters no longer have to choose between hitting and hitting, they have options. Wizards no longer shoot their whole wad within the first few rounds. It's a good thing.

There's only one important question when looking at an RPG, and that is: is it fun? Obviously the OP didn't think so. Does that make the game objectively bad? Of course not. But can people who want a more casual, fast paced experience out of D&D still have a good time playing it? Yep.

[spica2501]

My group got our hands on the PDFs a week ago and we've rolled up characters and run a trial encounter. It wasn't bad. Different, sure, but not completely in a bad way. It's playable and fun while playing. To those complaining about fluff: come on. D&D has always been notorious for bad fluff. This isn't any different. The idea of powers in general is silly but it works well enough and the game really feels balanced quite well.

As for complaints, my biggest complaints are that wizards are much less fun to make. All wizards seem to be the same anymore. In fact, that's my complaint with all of the classes: they all seem too similar and it gives the feel of less variety. Character creation isn't very fun anymore either; I for one loved skill points because of the flexibility it gave the character (though I do like some of the changes like combining Hide and Move Silently into Stealth or whatever). My two favorite core classes are right out, as well: bard and monk.

On the whole, I enjoy the 4e experience.

If you think that D&D always had bad fluff, then you never played any of the good second edition campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, and, my personal favorite, Planescape).

I tried playing 4th edition again at world wide gaming day on Saturday, and I have a few more points of complaint to add. The first is that the entire system seems very watered down. The second that every feature of every class is all about combat, even spells/abilities that would have been considered buffs or support spells in previous editions do damage. The third is the flier they were handing out advertizing the new edition of the forgotten realms. It basically states that they are planning to shove dragonborn and eladrin down the realm's throaght, they are killing of the established NPCs (it doesn't say who, but I doubt even fanboy favorite Drizzt or Elminster have survived), and that "Kingdoms have risen and fallen." This basically translates to the realms no longer being the realms and indicates that Ed Greenwood has been striped of all creative control. I find this so disapointing because I was hoping that even if the core fluff sucked at least we would still have the realms to play in if we choose to do so.

And to those who like Eberron, actually play a game in it before you say its good. If you still like it, get you hands on the 2nd ed source books of the settings I mentioned previously, read them, and then reconsider whether Eberron is actually as good as you thought it was, or if it is a hollow, souless setting that leaves you with the same aftertaste as an artificial sweetner.

[imperialus]

A lot of the old fluff was pretty hit or miss though, and it was very scattered. The Dragonlance Chronicles is still arguably one of the worst adventure designs ever and even Darksun (my personal favorite) was pretty spotty, and could be very difficult to play a campaign of any real length. Some of it was just weird too. I mean really, what were they smoking when they came up with Spelljammer?

"DUDE! Wouldn't it be like so cool if there was a D&D game where you had like sailing ships and shit, but in space?"

"Yeah, and there could be some ships that were like shaped like fish and crazy shit like that."

"Hey, guys... have you ever looked at your hand? Like really looked at it? It's like awesome."

Just to address the FR comments. The last Podcast by the Wizards team talked quite a bit about how they are dealing with the Realms.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4arch/pod

First, they are advancing the timeline by 100 years or something. They're using the spellplauge to explain the changes in magic sorta like how the 2nd crash changed the matrix. Mystiria is dead, I can assume that Elminster is probably a lot less powerful, but this is also addressing the #1 complaint about FR. It scales back the NPC dominance of the setting. I mean lets face it, Elminster is the ultimate DMPC and a lot of groups hated that.

I can't remember how they talked about integrating Eldran but the Dragonborn at least I can give a coles notes version of, and it was actually Greenwoods idea so it doesn't seem like he's being removed from the picture. Also keep in mind I'm no FR guru, I played in an old grey box campaign but that was it. Hopefully my mangling of cannon and half remembered quotes don't confuse things too much.

Anyhow, it's never actually been explained what exactly is 'forgotten' about the Forgotten Realms. Greenwood has always had that in the back of his mind though (after all he named the world after it). It turns out there is another whole continent that has been until now unexplored. Now apparently there was a period of Realms history where there was a huge dragon empire running... well everything.

The same empire existed on the other continent and after the 'realms' (ferun?) overthrew the dragons contact between the two continents was cut off. The dragon empire remained strong on the second continent however and developed independently of Ferun. That's where Dragonborn come from.

[FrankTrollman]

Fighters no longer have to choose between hitting and hitting, they have options. Wizards no longer shoot their whole wad within the first few rounds. It's a good thing.

This is objectively false. Fighters choose between hitting and hitting. They have two different at-will abilities which are both "I hit a dude" one of them additionally kills a minion if they are adjacent to the monster you are attacking, one of them pushes the monster you are attacking backwards. But they are both hitting a dude. It's an option I suppose, but it's not a really meaningful option. Once all the minions have been cleaned out you're just going to use Tide of Iron over and over again until you run out of opponents.

A Wizard, or any character for that matter, runs out of Encounter and Daily powers in just a couple of round, and there is almost no reason to ever save them for later in a battle. Then you're down to using your basic powers over and over again. Yes, people are no longer using "the attack action" - they are using one of their super special powers. One of their two special powers. That don't change until 30th level. Literally from 1st to 29th level you will fall back on the same general purpose power over and over again in every single fight. Saying "Tide of Iron! Tide of Iron! Tide of Iron!" gets just as boring as saying "Full Attack! Full Attack! Full Attack!" There's a certain novelty to it for a while because it's a different phrase, but after 10 or 20 levels of doing the same thing every single combat all the novelty is long departed.

When Wizards run out of their super spells they no longer are forced to rely on quarterstaves and crossbows. Now they just cast Ray of Frost every single round for ever. It's just like someone gave every Wizard a Reserve Feat at first level. Except that unlike a Wizard from previous editions, they end up forced to their reserve power every fight. Where a high level Wizard used to eventually get enough Daily powers to get him through every round of every combat, the 4e Wizard will always run dry before the enemy is quite half dead. At higher levels he has some more use-limited super spells, but enemies have even more hit points than the extra rounds of casting Meteor Swarm and Prismatic Spray will do. Indeed, the number of rounds he spends per combat casting Magic Missile over and over again increases as levels increase.

-Frank

[Particle_Beam]

A level 1 Fighter has far more things to chose from in 4th edition than in prior. Two at-will powers, one encounter power, one daily power, and possibly some racial power add up to your battle prowess. Should you be that desperate for having a absolute normal attack, you can still use basic-attack at will too. And of course, it's not like you're fighting the good fight alone. That's what you get your wizard buddy for, the cleric dude (or the warlord guy), the rogue, the ranger, warlock, or the paladin helping you beat u, who are all using their own encounter powers, at will powers, daily powers, racial powers... All that at level 1.
At higher levels, everybody has more encounter powers, more daily powers, and magic items also grant more powers. And as already said, a group of 5 level 30 guys can beat up a level 30 monster with 1450 hit point in 7 rounds. If you're reducing yourself to only at-will powers for an encounter, you deserve to let the battle drag on. Archwizards even get the ability to turn one of their daily powers into an encounter power. Other epic destinies allow you to regain all your spent daily powers (or encounter powers, if you're a little bit unlucky). 4th edition works at higher level, far better than it does in 3rd edition.

[Fuchs]

I am intrigued by the "rituals". I'll have to check them out, they might be a better way of doing something that I was using in my 3E campaign already.

[Caine Hazen]

If you think that D&D always had bad fluff, then you never played any of the good second edition campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, and, my personal favorite, Planescape).

And to those who like Eberron, actually play a game in it before you say its good. If you still like it, get you hands on the 2nd ed source books of the settings I mentioned previously, read them, and then reconsider whether Eberron is actually as good as you thought it was, or if it is a hollow, souless setting that leaves you with the same aftertaste as an artificial sweetner.

Probably a personal taste thing, as the campaigns you mention are ones I thought were complete crap. Of those I'd play FR cause its what most of our GMs were running, but mostly with ported Greyhawk adventures anyway. For the most part I thought most of the fluff from those worlds was shite though.

[FrankTrollman]

I am intrigued by the "rituals". I'll have to check them out, they might be a better way of doing something that I was using in my 3E campaign already.

They are one-shot magic items that you purchase that require a skill check to activate.

Would you spend 50 gp to send forth an animal messenger? If you roll high enough on your Nature check, the animal will continue messenging for more than six hours.

A level 1 Fighter has far more things to chose from in 4th edition than in prior. Two at-will powers, one encounter power, one daily power, and possibly some racial power add up to your battle prowess.

A first level 3e Fighter can strike, disarm, grapple or trip. Also he has feats that give him additional real abilities like Cleave rather than just having feats that give static bonuses like Weapon Focus.

While I will admit that the races of 4e have slightly more special abilities, the fact is that a 3e Fighter inherently has actually more options than a 4e Fighter does. Recall that in 4e Disarms and Sunders aren't even possible without using up one of your Encounter powers, and Disarming requires a near-Epic power to attempt.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

They are one-shot magic items that you purchase that require a skill check to activate.

Would you spend 50 gp to send forth an animal messenger? If you roll high enough on your Nature check, the animal will continue messenging for more than six hours.

That's not a question I have to pose myself, or my players, since we do not play with gold coins, but use an abstract wealth system. And such rituals seem like a good way to add more options to our swordsman (who already meditated regularily), our priest (who already did "rituals" to commune with her deity, since she has no actual cleric levels) and even our barbarian might use such rituals to commune with acnestro spirits, or deities.

[Particle_Beam]

Disarm, Grapple and Trip only got used when you had the feat for it, as so, you got rid of the bloody counter-attacks-of-opportunity and had a much better chance to succeed thanks to your +4 bonus. And those options still suck against enemies who are massively larger than you, have Improved Grab (nearly every grappling monster did, and it's leagues better than your measly Improved Grapple-Feat), and tripping got impossible against more advanced enemies who had massive strenght, several legs, got some balancing boni like the dwarf or could fly. You didn't disarm the goblin dirt warrior at level 1. You simply killed him. One blow with your weapon, combined with your damage bonus from your strenght made it always better to simply hit the enemy with a regular attack than trying something flashy like disarming. Without the Improved Disarm Feat, you got an Attack of Opportunity, risked to get disarmed yourself, and all that you accomplished was that the weapon was at the ground of the enemy. Then, he picked up the weapon, got an AoO from you, and he attacked you with his own attack action. So, you wasted a turn doing nothing. Brilliant.
Or wait, Trip. You get an AoO, you risk being tripped yourself if you fail, and then the enemy lies on the ground. Then, the enemy tries to get up, get's an AoO from you, and then he attacks with his own attack action. Fantastic, you wasted your action doing nothing again.
Grab. Forget it. Without Improved Unarmed Combat and Improved Grapple, the moment you an AoO hits you, your grapple attempt has been stopped, and you wasted your turn for nothing, except taking damage. And if you do have those feats, then you do your meager unarmed damage... If you aren't a monk, stop doing it, right now, because you're only embarassing yourself, in front of everybody else. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif)

That's utterly brilliant. A 1st level 3rd edition Fighter gets the ability to delay the combat and waste his turn. Horray. That's a big improvement over the 1st level 2nd edition Fighter, who hit people with his one attack per round... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Nope, no, it wasn't. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

The googles do nothing. And the Internet breaks so many times, dammit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[last_of_the_grea...]

I only wish they'd strip Ed Greenwood of all his creative power! That guy... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) He never understood balanced classes! All his stuff was "Wizards rock, everything else sucks rocks! Magic must be everywhere and in everything!" Seriously, killing off all his freaking "Chosen" and immortal NPC's of Doom, getting rid of all that deus ex machina is a good thing. A complete revamp of the Forgotten Realms can only improve it. May Ed Greenwood forever have writer's block!

As for fourth edition, well, I reserve judgement until I actually play it, but I did buy the books and it is quite a change. I imagine such a drastic change can be quite a shock, especially to older gamers. My only suggestion (for what it's worth after alienating all Forgotten Realms fans) is to imagine it not as new D&D, but a new game entirely. Set aside your ideas of how D&D is "supposed to be" and try the game. If it still sucks for you, well, then you were right all along. If it changes your perception and because of that you can enjoy it, then yay!

[Fortune]

Shrug. To each their own. I quite like most of Ed Greenwood's stuff. I have even played in a couple of games that he GMed way back about 12 or 13 years ago, and had a great time.

He used to complain (probably still does) about how he'd often submit something for publication to TSR, and then could hardly recognize the final release of that work.

[Dumori]

Ed Greenwood has all ways been a story teller the FR setting works but not if people over do the NPCs like they're going to much with your average low level PCs any way.

[hyzmarca]

My question is, does the Spelunker build still work?