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[Moon-Lancer]

Specifically, Monks and Bards are described as fifth wheels in 3.x. The (heavy) implication was that when they are introduced to 4th edition they will no longer be a fifth wheel.

Cheers
Dan

well the monk is a controller, and the bard is a leader. I think they are only 5th wheels by definition. by party rolls, i think in 3.4 they are apart of the 4 wheel system.

I am also worried that Dave Noonan thinks that money 'disappears' once the PC spends it, and that there's no such thing as a "D&D economy." It's hardly a main point, but I hope they give a little more thought to the 'economic' consequences to rules.

do you calculate what a npc does with his gold after it leaves the pcs hands? i think noonan was just stating that if you don't track the gold, in a practical sense it does disappear. Another way to look at it is, if the pcs didn't exist, the world they inhabit would not exist ether because their would be no one to play in it. the dzn seems to be moving in such a way that makes the world incredibly ego centric to the pcs.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

well the monk is a controller

I'd call him a striker.

 

[Doug McCrae]

There was also a comment about scaling the non-caster classes up, while scaling the caster classes (specifically the wizard) back.

Totally f---ing awesome! I love this.

 

[Shadeydm]

So unlimited resource blasting plus level 25 spells equals scaling back wizards...

 

[Andor]

If they have less save-or-die spells it is...

 

[Mouseferatu]

So unlimited resource blasting plus level 25 spells equals scaling back wizards...

"25th-level spells" has no bearing on scaling up or back, if it just means they've broken pre-existing spells into more finely grained levels. (Even as far back as late 3.0/early 3.5, Chris Perkins said that he's house-ruled spells in one of his own campaigns to go from levels 1 to 20, so they corresponded with caster level.)

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I am also worried that Dave Noonan thinks that money 'disappears' once the PC spends it, and that there's no such thing as a "D&D economy." It's hardly a main point, but I hope they give a little more thought to the 'economic' consequences to rules.

I'm not sure that they've got a "simulationist" style gamer on the entire design team. They need someone who can take a look at things from a "reality check" point of view - I know thats somewhat ridiculous in a D&D game, but it would solve issues like Eberron being 10x bigger than it was supposed to be, or things of that nature.

For me, they don't necessarily have to put the simulationist kinds of things in the PHB or DMG as I can work them up myself, but it'd be nice if the system didn't fight it, which can be solved by just sittign down and asking basic questions fo 15 minutes ("hey nice map - why is every country as big as Russia?". We'll have to see how that goes.

 

[WotC_Dave]

I"hey nice map - why is every country as big as Russia?"

It drives me a little bonkers that the vast majority of Eberron has far less population density than Mongolia. So I'm with you there. In my own game, I hand-wave it, but that works only because I'm the only guy who cares.

--Dave.

 

[Grog]

"25th-level spells" has no bearing on scaling up or back, if it just means they've broken pre-existing spells into more finely grained levels.

And in fact, Monte Cook has said that they wanted to do this for 3E, but they ran out of time in development.

 

[Glyfair]

I am also worried that Dave Noonan thinks that money 'disappears' once the PC spends it, and that there's no such thing as a "D&D economy." It's hardly a main point, but I hope they give a little more thought to the 'economic' consequences to rules.

Dave has a bit about this in his latest blog entry

Daily Work: Some more adventure stuff, and then I'm gonna play with the D&D economy a little. I think the most important thing to realize about the D&D economy is this: It isn't one.

Actual exchanges of wealth are vanishingly rare, because most of the economic actors don't actually exist (they're NPCs). When your PC buys a sword from the NPC smith, that smith doesn't turn around and buy bread for his family. In an economic sense, he winks out of existence as soon as the PC's back is turned.

It's important to maintain a fictional veneer, of course. It's useful to breathe economic life into that smith; the PCs might encounter him later and find him more prosperous or on the brink of poverty. But don't mistake a reward mechanism (which D&D treasure/magic item system is) for a full-on economy.