Keldryn
Adventurer
Pasted from another forum:
I, for one, am really liking how it sounds so far...
Our staff is hard at work playtesting 4th Edition, and each week, we’ll give you a look inside one of our very own D&D games. These articles include plenty of homebrewed material that the players and DMs have made up to suit their own campaigns, just like your games, but we’ll be sure to point out when they’re stretching their creative muscles.
Keep in mind that the game is still in a state of flux, as refinements are made by our design and development staff. You’re getting a look behind the curtain at game design in progress, so enjoy, and feel free to send your comments to dndinsider@wizards.com.
June 28th, Thursday Night, Wizards Conference Room (Wayne Manor).
Campaign Arc: Castle Smoulderthorn
DM: Dave Noonan
Players: Bruce Cordell (yours truly), Richard Baker, Logan Bonner, and Toby Latin
Before we begin play, another player is giving Rich grief about one of Rich’s character’s abilities that grants the rest of us a blanket +2 to saves; it just ain’t sexy. Rich says something like, “I don’t know, I doubt I’ll use it that much, but who knows, maybe everyone in the party will get entangled.”
Sure enough, not 10 minutes later this fire-crazed flame priest has entangled half the party with fire snakes! Rich throws up his +2 to saves and, voila, at least two of us get free immediately. I guess that power isn’t so corner case after all.
In my case, I’ve thrown together a “psion.” It’s because prior to the shift to the new playtest rules, I was playing a psion elan named Infandous. You wonder, why the scare quotes? Well, just between you and me, updated-Infandous-the-psion is actually a wizard with the serial numbers filed off.
Anyhow, I missed the last few sessions, so I’m slightly confused when the session begins—apparently the group is still breathing hard from their last session, not even rested or healed, when we hear a shuffle of footsteps from behind a set of double doors. The doors aren’t completely closed, so I “mentally” whip them open from across the room.
Coming down the hallway is a troop of azer, some sort of burning serpent, and the flame priest I mentioned earlier. And it was a fight! And . . . we won. Without really breaking a sweat, either, truth be told.
Emboldened, we advanced down that hallway now littered with azer remains and ash, took a right, and pretty quickly found a dusty lintel inscribed with the words: Tomb of the Black Host.
“Sounds like someplace loot is stored,” said Infandous, eager to expand his repertoire of cool equipment. A little more discussion, and we pushed on the door. It opened . . .
And Dave spent nearly 10 minutes constructing (using Dungeon Tiles!) an ominous, crypt-lined ruin complete with three golden sarcophagi that emanated magic. Dave did a good job laying out the floor plan of the room. Such a good job that we lingered in the door looking into the shadow-lined mausoleum for a minute, then, another . . . then decided as a group that, loot or no loot, perhaps it would be better to let whatever lay in the deathly quite of the tomb alone. So, we closed the door and continued down the main hallway.
Sorry, Dave.
The Design & Development article series premiered on the D&D website back in September 2005, and has been a staple ever since. With the approach of 4th Edition, and our designers and developers focused on the new edition, this column will be the primary vehicle for 4th Edition coverage. We’ll not only give you peeks at what’s forthcoming, but also the “how” and “why.”
Keep in mind that the game is still in a state of flux, as refinements are made by our design and development staff. You’re getting a look behind the curtain at game design in progress, so enjoy, and feel free to send your comments to dndinsider@wizards.com.
Here’s a highly probable conversation lifted from the future, one year from today, as two players who’ve just met at a convention discuss their PC choices for their upcoming D&D game.
“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.
The Design & Development article series premiered on the D&D website back in September 2005, and has been a staple ever since. With the approach of 4th Edition, and our designers and developers focused on the new edition, this column will be the primary vehicle for 4th Edition coverage. We’ll not only give you peeks at what’s forthcoming, but also the “how” and “why.”
Keep in mind that the game is still in a state of flux, as refinements are made by our design and development staff. You’re getting a look behind the curtain at game design in progress, so enjoy, and feel free to send your comments to dndinsider@wizards.com.
Set the wayback machine to May of 2004!
Even at that point, we knew 4th Edition was coming, though official work on it wouldn’t start for another year. At the time, the design team used to meet regularly in what we jokingly called the “Design Cabal.” And one day, in May ’04, we started kicking around the question of how many slices of pie a D&D character should consist of, and how big each piece should be.
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.
I, for one, am really liking how it sounds so far...
