I actually quite dig the Dragonborn. I think they look pretty cool, on the whole, though I think in my games, they'll have tails. (Of course, I also tend to think of them as evolved Draconians as well, so... )

Bull

Draconians trapping your weapon was the pwnest thing ever. (That's positve, right?)

It's like, SIDEARM BITCH!

Seriously.

I dunno, when I envision them with tails they instantly become discolored, super-sized kobolds.

I would've preferred kobolds. Or hobgoblins. Or orcs (especially orcs). D&D already suffers tremendously from race bloat, and I truly don't think that we needed people to make new races of any kind for the PHB. Especially as the new races don't really cover any of the newly defined roles super well.

The Draconians are going to be the Bullysaurus in every group. That's the guy who specializes in Intimidate and demands (and receives) the surrenders of bloodied opponents rather than taking the time to beat them up all the way (this saves an increidble amount of time, especially at high levels). But while every group wants a Bullysaurus, the way the designers talk about it, they seem genuinely surprised that such a position exists in parties.

So color me confused. The Dragonborn don't seem to actually do any of the things the designers wanted players to do. They aren't optimized to be a grind paladin or a tron paladin. They aren't optimized to be a hammer fighter or a sword fighter. They aren't optimized to be a laser cleric or a beat cleric. And while they can walk in as a perfectly acceptable Charisma based Feylock, there are literally 4 other races in the PHB alone that could do that job just as well. The only role in the party they really uniquely fill: the Bullysaurus; is a role that wasn't even "supposed" to exist.

Interesting note: They made a patch for the Wizard.

A severe advantage to having all the abilities in the game be very similar is that you can seriously add relatively large swathes of content to the game very easily. Whole new roles every bit as well defined as "Laser Cleric" or "Bowazon" can be added to the game by writing 2 At-wills, 8 Encounters, 7 Dailies, 7 Utilities, and a Paragon path. Since those abilities are all basically collections of keywords drawn off a half-page list, you can write two to three of these character paths while in the bath tub.

While the game didn't give us a fully viable flail Fighter set of moves, one could just spend ten minutes writing the extra abilities required to make that go. One wasn't granted a fully playable Bugbear, but with the introduction of some racial weapons, two minor abilities, 2 Heroic Feats and a Paragon feat, the Bugbear would be good to go.

In less than half an hour you can make a Bugbear Flail Fighter just as playable as anything else in the game from levels 1 to 30.

-Frank

Less, actually.

That's incomplete, which was kind of my point. The Bugbear takes very little effort to ring to a playable state.

Creating a viable class path is more difficult, but is still the creation of just a small list of abilities and most of the work is already done for you.

-Frank

A house ruler's paradise then?

Since this is the positive thread, sure. We'll go with that.

-Frank

I'll bite. What's it missing?

The other abilities. The racial weapons. The racial feats.

It's 3/4 of a playable race. Go ahead and compare it to an Elf. Or a Dwarf. Or a Tiefling. It's not complete. It even says that it isn't complete at the beginning of the section.

-Frank

Okay, yeah, I can see it.

We just played our first 4th edition session last night. My normal SR4 group (where I was GMing) came to the end of our story arc (after 2 years) and the timing was right to keep our game schedule but get into 4th edition DnD. We all got the books last week and had characters ready for last night.

My first impressions from reading the books:

1) A ton of balance. Borrowing from the MMO world, balance is king, and I think they've done a really good job with balancing these initial classes, races and powers. There's a lot to choose from but because of the balance, its best to build a group balance as well. Each class fits into a role and by balancing the party roles, you really can increase the level of fun. Not to mention the monsters are also balanced so you can plug in any combination of monsters that equal, say 500 XP and know that your 1st level group of five players, will have a challenging combat experience.

2) Streamlined. Everything seems very streamlined. Every class has at-will, encounter, daily and utility powers. For spell casters, they take the form of spells, but for martial types, they are tactics and combat powers. Saving Throws are a basic 50/50 chance (with a rare few modifiers) and ongoing effects offer a save to end every turn. Their are four defenses: AC, Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower, and different powers target different defenses. There's just a lot of similarity in format, but a wide array of options available to each class/race.

3) Skill Challenges. This blew me away...in addition to combat encounters, DMs can set up skill challenges. There are some great examples in the book, but basically the DM sets up a scene, chooses some core skills and difficulties and then the players can rollplay or roleplay the encounter, choosing different skills (either that make sense or possibly in creative ways). The difficulty factors in based on the target number to hit and the amount of successes needed before x failures occur. Some skills used can open up other skills. Some are automatic failures when used (like trying to Intimidate a noble could count as one failure no matter what) and some provide a bonus to the next player's skill check. All in all, with a little setup work, the DM can set up an encounter that utilizes your skills instead of combat. And the template can be used from anything like negotiating a better room rate at the inn to pursuing a thief through the woods at night. Its really open to the DM to build these encounter challenges, but there is a huge world of creative roleplaying opened, even for those that have trouble with it.

Now, from last nights session, I must admit, it was a blast! We only had time for one encounter, where while foraging for food, we faced off against a group of goblins carrying a stone chest. Combat ensued shortly (although I did make an attempt to pass by peacefully) and we had a lot of fun with all the options available each round. I play a warlord (which is a "leader", the same role as a cleric) and one of my at-will powers is that I can exchange my standard action, to give any ally a melee attack...and I used it a ton last night. There can be a lot of strategy involved in combat, but you could also simply hack and slash. We found that our two damage classes could get up front, attack and draw the enemy towards them, while my warlord buffed their attacks, healed when necessary and output a little damage as well. Then the casters, one single target the other AoE, handled the rest...

What I found was that each round, for each player, wasn't an "oh duh, I attack" moment. Depending on where everyone was situated, everyone had a couple options, and at least one of them involved enhancing the group strategy.

We didn't stumble on any rules, as everything was straight forward with no vagueness and everyone was engaged in the entire time. It was a lot of fun, even though we didn't get any skill challenges last night!

I'm definatly liking what I've seen. Some notes from me:

1. No more squishy wizard: 20 hit points at 1st level easily done.

2. Balance makes everyone feel useful, and everyone has options.

3. The wizard spell addition that Frank referred to was very necessary (they had nothing that attacked Will, everything was Ref or Fort)

4. They actually have a tanking system, that isn't as slapped on as it was in 3.x. No more "must attack", but rather if you don't you will take a penalty.

5. Everything is Roll Attack vs. Static Defense. Before you had the DC for spells, that you rolled saves against, while melee was roll attack to hit defense. This new way is much more streamlined.

6. Encounters are easy to put together.

7. Being able to easily put together new classes/races is good, even if they all look extremely similar once you zoom out.

8. The new system has so much more going for it in terms of tactics. The way the classes mesh, and play off one another looks like a real adventuring party, rather then a bunch of adventurers just happening to be going in the same direction.

9. Strict treasure tables, while some would think are constraining, I feel they give you a good idea of how much people should have for each level. You don't have to follow them precisely but you know the range so if you give less, your adventurers will be weaker, if you give more they will be stronger. Again more points for balance.

So my buddy and I sat down, created a 5 PC party that seemed 'typical'. Fighter, Paladin, Rogue, Warlord, Wizard at 5th level and started grinding them through different fights just to see how the mechanics held up.

We did fights above and below their level, fights against different monster combos, from a huge brawl against 20+ Legion Devil Grunts to a classic battle against a Young Red Dragon and the system didn't break down even though the Red Dragon was a Solo, two levels above the party.

Every fight was a challenge but once we got the hang of the system and had a feel for our powers the combat went lighting fast. The Red Dragon killed the fighter, knocked the Paladin down to 1 healing surge, dropped everyone to 0 HP at least once, and generally made the parties life hell. They still managed to win though.

The Devil Grunts swarmed around the defenders and killed the Wizard and Rogue. The Wizard still managed to take about a dozen of them with him though before he was overwhelmed. Rogue kinda underperformed in this battle, but killing minions isn't what he was designed to do. Hordes of nothing but minions is the one thing that did seem to screw the system up a bit. In an actual game I'd strongly recommend against using encounters that consist of nothing but minions, or if you do make sure it's a lower level encounter. The party was just overwhelmed trying to deal with too many attacks coming from too many different directions. The Warlord got brought down too and although the Fighter and Paladin did win, the fight just wasn't much fun.

As far as more balanced encounters went, we found that things started to break down when we were using encounters more than 3 levels above the party, or more than 3 levels less. It didn't seem to matter what kind of enemies we threw at them, as long as the encounter level was right. We did one fight against a whole mass of low level goblins and it was still a challenge, did one against a pack of level 6 Gnoll soldiers with a level 8 leader but kept the encounter level the same as the partys and it was still fun.

One other thing we noticed, is that when the PC's did end up in over their heads we knew it long before we started edging towards a TPK. We kept fighting until the TPK because they were test games but one of the big problems I found with 3.X is that if the DM screwed up the CR calculation things could go very bad for the party, very quickly. In 4E the DM can throw encounters far above the parties level (as in 5 or 6 levels above) at them and the PC's have at least a couple rounds to realize they've stepped in it deep and can make a retreat.

As a GM I despised the CR system. It was difficult to use and not very intuitive. The new system is a good mix of AD&D 2nd and 3.X style encounter generation.

Each monster now has an XP value again. They also have a level and a role that tell you how hard they should be and generally how they act/what they're good at. To make an encounter you just grab the XP/Level from a chart, multiply by the number of characters, and then "buy" creatures out of your budget. To adjust encounter difficulty you just alter the XP/level. Easy as pie.

The only negative, as someone pointed out is that the MM doesn't include wandering monster charts or easy reference tables for encounters of a specific level. Each monster enty has at least 1 encounter printed up but no index for said encounters.

I've tried several encounters so far. (apart from the obviously broken skill challenges) I have to say I like it better than I did after I'd read the rules but hadn't played. I haven't quite figured out if I'm using stealth in combat correctly yet, but overall, despite all the differences, I still felt like I was playing D&D, and I'm really not sure why.

I have spent the past week delving the depths of the new system ... and even more perusing the findings of other people's depth-delving ... and have come to the conclusion that I am quite excited about this edition of D&D. That is something that I haven't been able to say since moving from Basic to AD&D way back in the caveman days. I really wish I had some people to play with though.

Should WotC get the virtual tabletop working you'll be able to find players or GMs online. (Of course, there are already sites who offer online games.)

I am looking forward to seeing what all their virtual tabletop system will be able to do. Some of the current ones are nice, but they're all, so far as I know, pretty basic and generic. The Virt Tabletop, combined with the 3-D minis, the "create your own avatar" thingy, and all that could rock.

Or, it could suck

EIther way, it bears watching, and could have an impact on how game companies develope their games from now on.

I dunno if I'm willing to fork over $15 US per month for that stuff though.

There are other, free sites.

I assume he was replying specifically to my comment

And I agree that $15 a month is a bit much, but it all depends on whether or not I'm gonna use it, and exactly how flexible and powerful the site ends up being. If I can get an online D&D group together to play a couple times a month, and the features it promses are simple and quick to use, I'll likely go for it. If not, I'll pass. In either event, I'll check it out, just to see what it's capable of.

I don't have the time for D&D online games, so the VTT is of no interest to me.

Tried it out yesterday. Not as bad as expected.

Positives: easy to play, combat goes fast, controled the rabid power gamers in the group well. nice feel over all. will definitly be playing again.

Downside: only complaint was" It plays like a video game."

I can't wait to play D&D4ed... but i just can see myself GM'ing it.

I´ve read some powers in the book and i just can't connect then to anything that i could describe, and this Warlord power is one of then. The powers works much more and a Card Effect (on a CCG) than a real power, move or strategy.

- WARLORD: I will use my Commander's Strike on the Fighter.

- GM: All right. Fighter... the Warlord scream "attack" to you, and for some unknown reason you feel the urge to attack your opponent. Not only this, but you magically becames faster, so you can attack now even if you spent all your actions on this turn. And for no apparent reason you use the Warlord Intelligence attack.

Sorry... but it just don't feel right for me.


Ona positive note, i guess that should be easy to anyone that like Final Fantasy games to adapt it to D&D.

Karon- Warlord
Barath- Fighter

Observing the flow of battle, Karon waits for the right instant and shouts at Barath "Right thrust low!". Trusting his friend Barath leaves himself open and drops low, left arm stabilizing him on the ground and the orcs clumsily swung club caresses his hair, his right arm flick back and then forward in a thrust, capitalizing on an opening he might never have seen on his own.


I typically like to describe most combats from an end of turn perspective so it would fit even better into the overall frame, but if you are playing DnD and can't let something like this slide, then it probably isn't the system for you. Not trying to be offensive, just saying the ability to help your friend attack is the least of the logic shattering things that happens if you think about it too hard. The main thing I've noticed that helps with things like this is to think of each combat round as it's own little time frame and realize that everyone's actions occur at roughly the same time in that combat round.

Chris

No offence taken... i´ve already said that D&D4ed is not for me to GM.

Even thinking "in the end or turn perspective", still strange to me. After using all his action, if the players ask for me for one more attack i would say "no, you're not fast enough"... but, then again, he will do one more (or even more if the party have more then one warlord on the group) attack. At least for me, there should be a limitation of how fast the character could attack... no matter if the Warlord scream to him or not.

But i can understand your description, and i guess it work. Just that is not my take this system... just to much abstract for me.

Speaking of flexible, is there word yet on payment options for all of this yet? I ask because, having spent my time in the MMO trenches, I'd personally never pay for anything like that (or a standard MMO for that matter) on a recurring subscription basis. I much prefer "time cards". They are much more flexible, available to anyone regardless of age or credit card availability, and more importantly to me, are not an automatic source of income for the billing company whether I use the site or not.

We're playing through right now, typing during the drink break. So far I''m having fun, and the fights are playing smooth. And I have brough thte glory of BubbaThulu to many people's lives.

I like my Warlock much.

okay,

just now have a chance to sit down and reply

I was in that game with Caine (thanks Bull), it was my first time even cracking open the books for more than a glance and i must say had a lot of FUN, it is most definelty very different from previous editions but has enough left in there to still be DnD, it definetely PLAYS much better than it READS!

My only criticism i have for all those people who say it isnt roleplaying anymore is WHAT?! When has a games rule system ever determined how to roleplay your character.

The game rules system makes it impossible to role play a human being in 4ED&D. Human beings do not go from a quarter inch from dead (negative hit points) to completely fine and able to perform at absolute peak efficiency (full hit points) after a spare few moments breather. We had this happen in game, where the groups Fighter made a heal check on the Cleric in combat (the Cleric was at -1 HP, dying as per the rules) to allow him a second wind healing surge. The combat then ended and the Cleric used three more healing surges immediately to go from dying, to 2hp below maximum immediately, with NO MAGIC and no other reason than he took a few moments to get his breath.

When the game system makes it impossible to get hurt (oooohh, you can die, obviously, but getting an actual wound must be completely impossible) in combat it makes role playing more than difficult. It makes it untenable for anything even vaguely man like.


Isshia

yes it is not realistic, but when has DnD ever been realistic

and yes the healing system is one of the things im not completely sold on, i need to play more to se how many times that kind of situation comes up

but still the pc are supposed to superheroic more than "human" bigger than life heroes so i dont see where that changes how you would roleplay, for one that only affects combat situations, which in my campaign is less than half of the adventures usually, and two your combat tatics and actions should be determined by your archtype (or what is it they call it ... role) not "how quickly will i recover from this?"

While I agree, its not realistic, I can also say I have not been in a world with magic, monsters and adventurers crawling through dungeons with a magic wand.

The whole healing system, surges and the like, are a game mechanic to allow the group to go longer without needing to rest. I played in my second session last night and we had two more combats as we entered a decrepit manor house. I'd say our group of 5 was average 2 or 3 healing surges per encounter, which included taking a short rest to replenish our encounter powers.

Its a game mechanic, and frankly, works quite well in practice. Now, if you need to justify this or don't like the fact that at the end of the day, your hero is going to be at 100% (as it only take 4 surges for anyone to get back to full health) without magic...well...I don't know what to say. There are a lot of rules in a lot of games that I don't necessarily see an easy way to justify, but it is a game and the rules are there for a reason.

I suppose you could do away with healing surges, but then you make a lot of powers somewhat useless. For me, at the end of the day, we are playing heroes and I don't need an in-game justification on how my group just barely got by the epic fight but after a 5 minute rest we are back to full power, maybe minus some daily powers...

The problem isn't realism...who wants realism in a fantasy game, but rather verisimilitude.

If you have even the thin excuse of magic you can ignore such stupidity, it's magic after all, it doesn't have to make sense, even in a vague way, or act in an understandable manner because who can dispute it?

BUT

Healing is a natural thing. If you do this to healing it is no different from all water now suddenly being tens of thousands of degrees hot and freezing you therefore on contact. If it should make sense BECAUSE it is supposed to represent a part of the natural and normal environment, you don't fuck with it thoughtlessly, which is what has been done.

And it isn't just the PCs who heal this way. If you pick up a barmaid who is traveling with the group for whatever reason, she too can do this (the healing surge). This has nothing to do with being larger than life. It's there WoW for the table top solution to having everything work the same way for everyone.

The barmaid gets wounded unto death by a broadsword stroke that brings her to -1 hit points. Ohhh, no! Never fear, the most it can take her to heal back to full and complete health is two days of taking normal six hour naps after having worked all day in the bar from fifteen minutes after having taken her deadly wound!

Verisimilitude is an important component of actual ROLE (as opposed to Roll) Playing. If normal, natural things don't work in something at least resembling broadly the same way they do for us, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify with the character. If water suddenly flows upwards, naturally, normally, and gravity only works every other Thursday and water is suddenly dry....

And if you heal from near death to perfect health in two days if you are the average peasant ...

The game fails to be a Role Playing Game. If they were to market it as a Roll Playing Game so that Role Players wouldn't waste their money on it, it would be far more palatable.



Isshia

If healing surges bother you, then find a way to explain them. I am going to run a little 1 or 2 shot dungeon crawl just to test the system for me and my friends sometime soon- maybe tonight- and I will probably explain healing surges inside and outside of combat differently simply because of the flavor.

During combat, healing surges will mostly just be a focus thing.

Wizard - "Klavas stops for a moment and concentrates- compartmentalizing his pain and storing it away for later- allowing him to push his body past the point it would normally stop."
Angry Fighter - "Baras roaring in challenge, is momentarily overcome by his rage, no longer feels the wounds on his legs as nothing matters beyond the next kill.

Keep in mind that the human body can sustain massive trauma and survive. In fact, it is a lot less likely that you will die if that trauma is spread out. Healing surges actually almost represent the ability of the human body to take X amount of trauma and go into shock, and either die or wake up and be capable of taking more punishment.

Out of combat will be more meditative. Especially for the cleric, something along the lines of "Darian reaches out and connects with his god for a brief instant that lasts an eternity- feeling his love and approval(anger and pain, stoic dedication, etc.) rewarded, Darian wakes mere seconds later to find that a pleasant aftermath of his brief connection is that some of his wounds have closed."

Similar things could be used for the other classes.

Chris

A Hero goes from -2 to full health in minutes? "Dude, weren't you like dead?" "Yeah, but I'm better now" classic TV trope.

Yeah, healing is now an Action Movie Hero kind of thing, more than an actual physical representation of damage.

Except there are no negative HPs now, you drop to zero and get 3 saves before you die. Also as a note, most characters can only get 1 "second wind" (healing surge) per encounter, they still need Warlords, Paladins and Clerics to get them any more healing surges, thus their roles are not negated completely. As a second wind equals 1/4 of the starting HPs its not too big a gain.

People who can't abstract HPs past damage are sad sad souls indeed.

That's not entirely true. You don't lose hp when you're dying, and if you get healed you apply that healing from zero rather than from your actual negative hp (so any negative hp you had are instantly forgiven), but you still track your negative hp, and when you hit negative hp equal to your bloodied value you die, irrespective of death saves.
Otherwise, it would be impossible to kill a downed enemy.

As for the healing surges, I agree with the action movie metaphor. If you get all beat to hell (like the protagonist does at the beginning of the action movie) and then use your healing surges to get up to full hp, even if you rest for a day and get all your surges back, you still look like hell. You still have manly cuts on your face, and bandages, and you wince heroically when you take your shirt off, and maybe you limp a bit, but when the next big fight comes, do you hobble for a moment and then get whooped? Of course not, the big action hero suddenly fights fantastically, his abilities apparently unhampered by his previous injuries (*handwave* adrenaline *handwave*), and then at the end of the fight he wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth, fires off a witty one-liner, and goes on to fight the next set of baddies.

So you have to think of it as: full hp (end even full surges) does NOT necessarily mean you are not hurt. This is a big departure for some people, and I think they're having some trouble looking at it like that, or maybe just refuse to. It means that your action-hero abilities are unimpeded. You may well be hurt, and look like hell, and you should be role-playing that, but you can still roundhouse-kick-to-the-face as well as ever.

Here is it:
Hit points and healing surges are not health, or wounds, or luck, or dodging ability, they are plot points, which mechanically represent how many successful attacks you can withstand before you get a big GAME OVER, and there is no reason why their fluffy description should be consistent from attack to attack, character to character, or moment to moment.

I'd like to see (And at some point, expect to see) some additional rules to add to the whole HP thing. If I ever run D&D again full time, I might add something to them myself. Something similar to what Star Wars d20 did, with HP and... I don;t remember the term off hand., But basically you had the standard HP pool that kind of worked like stun damage, or cinematic damage, and then you also had a "real" set of points that represented actual, serious damage.

The mix of the two would be nice, I think, for long term play, and to make the PCs feel a little more threatened. Though considering how badly I was kicking them around with Kobolds at Origins, not sure they need to be threatened much more

uuhhhhmmmmm ..... yeah i dont think we needed threatened anymore than we were

Bah, we should just make Max Payne: The RPG already. It'd have more angst roleplay than a game of Vampire!

Look, just cause your fighter ate a crit on turn one, random max damage on turn two, and another crit on turn 3...

Heh. Good times.

Bull

Hit points aren't just damage, but according to both the DMG and the PHB they represent the amount of damage your character can sustain. They don't even say, in those books, that it ALSO represents this, which is what I have been saying. Their direct quotes talk about how much damage the character can sustain.

What's really sad is fan boys who will eat garbage because it has a certain label on it and compliment the chefs on the taste and then damn anyone who dares say: "but it's garbage".


Isshia

Star Wars D20 revised had the hp mechanics very well done and explained with their WP/VP system. D&D 4E can do the same if one subs the sub-zero mechanics for the WP.

I could probably easily live with a system that used hit points to track just fatigue/luck/will of the gods/skill if below it there did exist a negatives "wound point" type system. I should have thought of that idea myself, as it's integral to GURPS and has been for more than 20 years, but now the problem becomes designing a working universal one that doesn't destroy other balance issues.

And then fixing the skill challenge system.

And then fixing the rigidity of the not only class, but class and "role" (Controller, Defender, Leader, Striker) system.

Ahh, the hell with it. It's just not worth it.



Isshia

The problem is you can't plot point an RPG like you can a movie... unless you don't want the RPG to do ANYTHING but be able to reproduce (cheesy) movies.


Isshia

vs. the people who continuously nitpick at details in something for the explicit purpose of finding something to hate. kind of equally sad in my eyes.

Yeah. And what is even sadder is that these nitpicking people are still eating the garbage they decried upon, old and new "garbage".