D&D 4E 4E: What we think we know

[Bacris]

And as far as this new resource management/power source tease we've been given I think it has to do with the limitations of psionics in the game.

I strongly, strongly doubt that Core 4E will have psionics in it. I'd prefer to be wrong, but I still doubt it.

 

[messy]

I'm calling it now. They are eliminating Gnomes and Bards from the PHB.

you might be right. they almost dropped the gnome in 3rd edition.

as for the bard, i dunno... lots of people like bards. maybe they'll make it a prestige class.

what i'd like to know is, who will be the lead writer for each book? for 3rd edition, it was:

player's handbook- jonathan tweet
dungeon master's guide- monte cook
monster manual- skip williams

messy

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm calling it now. They are eliminating Gnomes and Bards from the PHB.

Half-Orcs and Monks is my bet.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

From theminiaturespage.com


Umm, 4e on amazon???
And here?

What the heck are those? They're previews but I have to shell out 20 bucks for each of them? Yeah right!

 

[heirodule]

Living greyhawk doomed

from the inquest article

Wizards does recommend you begin new campaigns with Fourth Edition. “It’s not going to be as huge a jump,” as from Second Edition to Third Edition, said Slavicsek, “but there’s enough changing in the core system of how we are doing classes and races and characters that we’re not even gonna attempt it—we’re just telling you it’s better to start over.” Conversion went over like a lead balloon with Third Edition anyway.

I was hopeful when some people said the changes would be slight.

But this is bad. That means all the 3.5 books WILL BE useless, and that if you do RPGA play, you have lots of useless books.

Livign Greyhawk's 3.0 -> 3.5 conversion was bad enough, but you'll be out the gate with no valid PrCs to play.

Ironcily, the RPGA starts a Ruins of Greyhawk campaign as part of LG at Gencon. You're supposed to make a PC now, so that, oh, by about MAY you'll be 8th level and high enough to start playing the NOW OLD EDITION ruins of greyhawk book.

If they find away around this massive problem for RPGA LG players, I'll be very suprised.

 

[Hjorimir]

you might be right. they almost dropped the gnome in 3rd edition.

as for the bard, i dunno... lots of people like bards. maybe they'll make it a prestige class.

what i'd like to know is, who will be the lead writer for each book? for 3rd edition, it was:

player's handbook- jonathan tweet
dungeon master's guide- monte cook
monster manual- skip williams

messy

My guess:

Player's Handbook - Mearls
Dungeon Master's Guide - Laws
Monster Manual - No clue

 

[johnnype]

I strongly, strongly doubt that Core 4E will have psionics in it. I'd prefer to be wrong, but I still doubt it.

I agree and I wasn't implying anything different. I was just saying that when the new psionics rules come out I hope the new power source/resource management rules will be taken advantage of to make them as seamless as possible.

It seems like most designers are allergic to psionics which is ridiculous if you consider that only about a quarter of D&D fans find them objectionable.

 

[Keldryn]

I don't like this. If they're rescaling the existing framework to fit into 30 discrete chunks rather than 20, I disagree with it on grounds of nostalgia: D&D has always been a 20 level game (in the incarnations I've played). If they're keeping scale the same, but offering more support for level 21-30, I question the usefulness of the material: how many games have you had which went on beyond 21st and you found yourself thinking "gee, I wish I had better options for 27th level"?

D&D has only been a "20-level" game since 2nd Edition, and even then it wasn't actually a limit.

1st Edition AD&D didn't have a hard level limit, and module H4 Throne of Bloodstone was even advertised as being for character levels 18-100.

The Mentzer-edited Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters D&D game from the mid-80s had the four human classes (Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief) top out at a hard limit of 36th level.

The 30th-level thing sounds like an improvement to me, but I've never seen anything even remotely inherent about 20 levels to D&D.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Can't say I'm happy about this. WotC so far has shown a good instinct of pissing off a lot of fans, I don't think this will be too different.

Yeah. They sure are good at that. From big, general mess-ups to personal insults, it's all there.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Nope. You are right.
They lied, simple as that.

Exactly. And the fact that they might have done it to sell more stuff makes it even worse: They lie to us about the next edition, we go buy the current-edition books, and then they jump out from behind a crate, laugh manically, and tell us that the next edition is very nigh indeed.