Of course lots of info is right here at Wizards.
- Will monsters still have types and subtypes similar to what they are now? Very different. Monsters fill key "roles" in encounters. All the stuff Mike was talking about on the Wizards website, that's all 4E. Mike's on the design team.
- Is 30 levels just 30 thinner slices of the same loaf, or is it the original 20 slice loaf plus another half a loaf? 1-10 Heroic, 11 - 20 Paragon, 21 - 30 Epic. Here's a great quote from Chris, "A lot of things are going to be changing, and we're going to put most of it in previews on D&D Insider, but I can assure you the Beholder will still only have 9 eyes."
The Team has been working on 4th Edition for over two years. Bill Slaviseck. Leads: Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt. Bill, Andy, Mike Mearls, and Rich Baker were the ones in the front of the room for this. Playtesting in campaigns at WotC (ie, Dave Noonan’s game) for the past several months.
- Resource Management: All classes have defined roles – a fighter is never penalized for being a “tank”, a “healer” is never penalized for curing, a mage is never penalized for “magic missiling”
- All characters have at will, per encounter, and per day uses they will have to keep track of. No more mages pulling out crossbows. You will never be penalized for doing what you do best – your clearly defined roles.
- Encounters will be built differently in 4th edition. There will be much more “situation” and complexity in the environment, swinging bridges, gouts of lava, etc. An encounter is like a scene of a play – could be talking to a town guard, could be defending a town gate, could be traversing the mountainside to enter the shrine of Asmodeus.
- There will be many more monsters for PC’s to fight. It’s more fun that way. There are very few encounters that are built to be all the PC’s against one big powerful bad guy. There will be more mechanics built to leverage the monsters and THEY’RE fundadmental roles. An ettin will be talking to itself throughout the encounter. This is the “monster’s job on the battlefield” this is how he reacts.
- The fog of war is much more interesting because when you approach an orc, he isn’t a set of specific stats. He has a very specific role, and you won’t know what it is until he unleashes it on the battlefield.
- Increase of magic across the board in all aspects of the game.
- Monster Manual is a 288 pagebook, with over 300 monsters. New format for stat blocks, simpler and easier to use
- Cooperative storytelling. The D&D world is points of light in a big dark world, sword and sorcery (medieval fantasy). Lots of blank spaces on the map.
- Greyhawk will not be default setting in core. We want to leverage the assets of the assumed parts of a D&D world – Mordenkainen, Bigby, Vecna, Llolth, Tiamat, Asmodeus, etc. However, we also want to call upon the great mythology that is more commonly known such as Thor, etc.
- More options, not restrictions. Everyone will be a constructive, useful member of the party, no accidental lame characters.
- Vancian magic system – there’s an element of that we held on to, but it’s a much smaller fraction of their overall power. A wizard will never completely run out of spells. They can run out of their “mordenkainen’s sword, however”.
- D20 gaming system – this is still a d20 game and game system. We got rid of the parts that didn’t help it out, but most of the things that work continue to be used.
- Skill system – familiar but truncated. Getting rid of tailor, rope use, etc. Focus on the skills that are really useful in an encounter. Saga edition is a significant stride forward and should be considered a preview. Same for profression, etc. We want characters making acrobatics, bluff, jump, etc. No characters will be stuck at 10th level saying “oh I never invested in that.” Hide/Move Silent are brought together. Now an important part of your character, and here’s how to apply it to an encounter. It’s rarely a check and done, it’s now, I make a check, and they react to it. What happens now.
- Primarily focused on physical products (PH, MM, DMG).
- Living Greyhawk – will be coming to a triumphant close next year, and they will be starting fresh with a new batch of characters and players. This will be discussed tonight or tomorrow
- 4 parts of 4E: Physical Products, Community, Organized Play – conventions, tournaments, etc. Working much closer with R&D to integrate. Chris Tulac(?) part of the playtesting, in from the ground up. Digital Offerings. Think of this like the second DVD with “extras”.
- Character Building: Less feat trees, easier for characters to swap out abilities much easier and try different things out. Each level from 1 – 30 each character will have interesting character development options to choose.
- Personalizing and specializing your character is amped up, it’s one of the most powerful things about 4th edition. If you’re a barbarian, you’re not a frenzied berserker. If you’re a barbarian, you’re a barbarian for your entire career. The frenzied berserker and bear warrior will be at the very end.
- Multiclassing – lots of compelling and interesting choices. A fighter who dabbles in wizard or dabbles in cleric is something compelling, Andy’s brother is playing a rogue wizard and he’s said in the conversion this is the character I wanted to play all along. The choices and powers are good powers on both sides. Backstab, throw chromatic orb across the room, then teleport across the room. There is no more “crappy fighter” attached to a “crappy wizard”.
- XP not getting rid, and for those not comfortable with eyeballing it will have a clear time as to when to advance. Much easier for the DM. I’ll build a level 8 encounter, totaling 8000 xp, this one, plus this one = 8000 done. No tables. Monsters have a level, just like characters. “A group vs. a “group” of 5th level is about the same as an EL5 encounter today.
- 4 player groups as the baseline? They are aiming for right around 5. Encounters are more modular, and now that there are a bunch, it’s a lot easier to scale it. Most data is 4-6 players are 80% or more of the gaming groups out there.
- D&D Insider – DRM, Downloadable vs. view online. We are still investigating, digital issues will be usable without being connected. Books – You will need to be logged in to use them. Still working out how to make this work for you and for us.
- Will the Wizard and Sorcerer merge? No. How many core classes? More than 3 less than 15, see the “pre-releases” at Wizards.com.
- “We had an expression from earlier discussions, the ranger kills the scout and takes his stuff…sorry Scout, you’re not going to make it. But now the Ranger’s going to be cooler because he’s taking all your stuff.”
- Do you know why the sorcerer’s in the game (3.5)? 1/3 of the PH was supporting only one class, hence the sorcerer came about.
- Monstrous races? Can you still make kobold barbarians? We’re not going to put limitations on the way we build monsters to make them work right. We know there are monsters that will become player character races. For example, it will be obvious how to play a goblin PC right out of the monster manual and PH.
- Will the D&D Insider authors be considered “canon”? Yes, it is our intention to treat this material as integral to the game and to the campaign worlds.
- Will alignment be a factor in the new edition? It’s not going to be what it is now. Alignment is part of the story, part of the character. It is a useful shorthand, but too many books and too many players mistake it for limitation. We want to treat alignment as something bigger than that. We won’t get rid of it, but we don’t want it to be a replacement for character and personality.
- Platform compatability? Starting with PC, because there are more.
- When can we start to play? Module comes out in April, with Quick Start rules. You could start that early. All the great content in Dragon and Dungeon magazines will be 4e, and will be relevant to 4e. We can start playing a month early.
- Magical Item Creation – they will no longer use Magic Item XP. XP are NOT a resource to be spent.
- FR will be the first campaign setting they support for 4e. They will get around to all of them, much of it will be available early on D&D Insider.
- Every adventure we put in Dungeon magazine will be portable to the Digital Gametable.
- Magic Item Creation. We tried to fool ourselves into the fact that there was a hard pricing, but we started recognizing that with MIC, that we should look at them more wholistically. There will not be magic item creation rules for DM’s as we realize that as professional game designers we don’t even get it right every time. We’re going to give you lots and lots of examples and suggest that you build it, test it, etc. Will it be easier for a wizard to create magic items?
- Yes, characters can still build magic items, it will be a way for characters to acquire things, but it will be more flexible and easier. There will be a preview article on this in two weeks on D&D Insider. Three releases a week (this one will be on Wed).
- Design philosophies on races. There is a tiefling on the player’s handbook. There may also be a changeling (from Eberron). Design philosophies of races. Mike did all the talking, where there will be a very REAL ACTIVE difference within the races that will really make a difference between the Dwarf Fighter and an Elven Fighter.
- Will we be doing ECL? That’s a good example of something applied to the game to help make somethings work easier. We don’t want to recreate this. We’re not going to give you rules to play a blink dog fighter… There will be many more choices, however, and we want to make sure they are all playable right out of the gate. If say, for instance, we put a tiefling in the PH, we would certainly want to make it playable right out of the gate. So, for example, we might have had to make a lot of the other races a little bit cooler to keep the balance straight between the races.
Race
Why Race Matters
Set the wayback machine to May of 2004!
In 3rd Edition, class and magic items were two big pieces of the PC pie. Race was important at 1st level, but by the time you hit 20th, there was rarely much to distinguish a dwarf fighter from a half-orc fighter. The difference between a +2 here and a +2 over there was drowned out by the huge bonuses from magic items and character level—it didn’t matter any more.
We wanted race to matter all the way up through a character’s career. We wanted there to be some difference between two characters of different races, all other things being equal. We had tried out mechanics like the racial paragons in Unearthed Arcana and the racial substitution levels in the Races of . . . series of books, and we liked the results.
In May of 2004, we started kicking around ideas like “the 20-level race.” In a 20-level race, at each level you gained, you’d get not only new class features, but also new racial qualities. Your race might predetermine which ability scores you increased at some levels, so a dwarf’s Constitution would always have an edge over characters of other races. It would grant you new special abilities as you advanced in level, always appropriate to your level, of course.
One key advantage we saw to this system was that it made it much easier to find room for new races without resorting to the kludgy and awkward mechanic of level adjustments. If we spread the tasty magical abilities of drow out through their levels, they could start at 1st level on a par with other character races. Races like the githyanki already anticipated some of that idea by granting new spell-like abilities at higher levels.
Well, over the next few years, things changed, as things are wont to do. We blew the game out to thirty levels, but put your most significant racial choices in the first ten. Above that, other choices started to crowd out room for special abilities coming from your race.
In the final version of 4th Edition, most of your racial traits come into play right out of the gate at 1st level—dwarven resilience, elven evasion, a half-elf’s inspiring presence, and so on. As you go up levels, you can take racial feats to make those abilities even more exciting and gain new capabilities tied to your race. You can also take race-specific powers built into your class, which accomplish a lot of what racial substitution levels used to do: a dwarf fighter with the friend of earth power can do something that other 10th-level fighters just can’t do.
The rules have changed a lot since that first idea of the 20-level race, but they still serve the same purpose: to make sure that your race stays not just relevant but actually important all the way up through thirty levels of adventure.
Class
Fighters: Choice of Weapons
“I’m playing a 3rd-level human fighter named Graelar.”
“Cool. Is he weapon and shield or two-hander?”
“He’s sword and board, man.”
“Longsword?”
“Yeah. I thought about going high Con and using a hammer, but I wanted to start with the chance to make a couple of attacks, so I’m using rain of blows as my good weapon attack, and I went with high Wis so that I can switch to the better oppy powers later.”
“My elf fighter uses a spear. I like the speed and the option to go past AC. But you’ve got the fighter covered. I’ll play a halfling rogue.”
The names and destinations of the powers mentioned above might have changed by the time the game is in your hands. What won’t change is that fighters care about which weapons they use much more than other characters. Other character classes have specific weapons and weapon types that they tend to rely on while still maintaining access to a larger chunk of the weapon chart. The fighter is the only current 4th Edition class with capabilities that depend on the weapon they have chosen to train the most with. Even at 1st level, a fighter who uses an axe has a different power selection than a fighter who relies on a flail or a rapier or a pick. In the long run, fighters can diversify and master powers related to a few different weapons, but most will opt to focus on the weapon that suits their personal style, helps their interactions with the rest of the PCs in the group, and carries all the magical oomph they’ve managed to acquire.
Many fighters will opt for swords. Swords have the most flexible assortment of powers. In a fighter’s hands, the longsword is the queen of the battlefield and the greatsword is the queen’s executioner. But each of the other significant melee weapons offers the fighter unique advantages and opportunities. For the first time, you’ll be able to say “I’m an axe fighter” or “I’m a flail fighter” and that will mean something cool.
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