4th Edition and the Immortals Handbook

[Upper_Krust]

Beat me to it. If they have indeed made monsters into "classes" of their own, this would be the most obvious way for how "templates" would work in the new edition. After all, if PCs can multiclass, why shouldn't monsters be able to as well?

I'm just curious as to how it works with things like Dire Animals.

Readings so far suggest that a monster's "role" in an encounter will be somehow as important as, if not more important than, its CR. And apparently encounters are going to grant XP in a greatly simplified manner, such that charts and the old XP-calculation system go bye-bye. A direct quote says that an 8th-level encounter will be granting 8000 XP, IIRC.

Thank god for that.

Definitely their prime motivation for going this way, I'd say. Assuming we're correct in how they're doing it, of course.

And as for asking them for details, I didn't go to any of the announcements or seminars myself, I just heard about 4E at a dinner on Thursday (only to find out Sunday night when I got back that at that exact time I was missing the first real 4E preview seminar), and saw the D&D demo game in the WotC booth once I got way the Hells over into that corner of the exhibit hall on Saturday. Of course, I saw the new beholder pic- they had them on t-shirts saying "4dventure begins May 2008"- and the "4 replaces A" advertisements were all over the con. Our room-key cards at the hotel even had "4dventure" on them, which was mysterious on Wednesday but became obvious on Thursday. Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that asking details is not really a thing I was in good position to do, even though I was at the same Con where they announced it. Gen Con is a truly enormous undertaking, and it's impossible for one person to become involved in more than a small fraction of what goes on there. It's an entire city of gaming that pops up in the middle of Indianapolis for 4 days each year and then vanishes again.

Thats okay - I forgive you for not asking who is the most powerful monster in the 4E Monster Manual...and other important questions.

The blurb recently posted by a WotC employee about Wizards casting "25th level spells" is telling though.

Sounds cool though.

One aspect I like is the...

At Will Abilities & Spells
Per Encounter Abilities & Spells
Per Day Abilities & Spells

...approach. That way you might run out of your most powerful spells/killing techniques, but you won't be left defenseless.

Given that Star Wars Saga Edition is said to have several parts of 4th Edition D&D in it, and that they've admitted to "playtesting" certain rules from 4E in recent books released ostensibly for 3.5, I'd say that most likely means that they're putting a system in place for spells that mirrors the one they introduced for items with the Magic Item Compendium. For those who haven't read that book, it does away with the old random treasure tables, and even downplays the item's precise gold-piece value- items now come with "levels" of their own, which are supposed to be the earliest level at which the item can be considered "standard equipment" for a character. Thus, if they're doing the same for spells, it means that a 25th-level spell is just one that a character has to be 25th level to cast. This seems to dovetail rather neatly with what little you've said so far about the system in Grimoire, so that's good news for you.

Certainly less items is a plus, because it just gets far too ridiculous when you have the big shopping list.

They've also said that they're trying to "extend the sweet spot" and make 30th level as interesting and meaningful as 1st or 10th, which is certainly a laudable goal. I don't see how they can do it, but perhaps when I get the new PHB it will become more obvious.

Its going to be interesting finding out how they balance that.

If the jump from 1st to 2nd is the same relative boost as the jump from 21st to 22nd then we know that proportionally it means less in terms of the percentage power increase - hence one of the main reasons for my CR system.

Given that a CR 8 monster is 8000 XP it appears thats how they will be doing it. So indirectly Version 6 of my CR system would still apply to 4th Edition.

Apparently they're designing the game towards three "tiers" of play, 1st-10th as Heroic, 11th-20th as Paragon, and 21st-30th as Epic.

I like this breakdown.

So Epic is being built in to the system from the get-go, in some fashion; the only question is whether there will ever be official support for "super-Epic" of 31st and beyond.

I suspect we will see it at some juncture.

Your system, obviously, falls squarely into the "super-Epic" niche. Possibly, if you're able to strike while the iron is hot so to speak, your system could be the first one on the market to address that regime of play.

The thought never crossed my mind.

That's admittedly going to be difficult if you can't get a publisher SRD from Mongoose though. Anyway, I'd say that the impending release of 4th Edition looks more like an opportunity for the IH than a detriment to it, since much of your design philosophy appears to be echoed in what WotC has said about 4E so far.

Well heres hoping. It would be nice to actually earn a living out of this.

 

[Alzrius]

Hey U_K, I've skimmed over the thread, and it's good to see that you're keeping so positive in the face of such daunting news (and in the face of where the news is still silent).

I haven't checked out the WotC forums where they're talking about 4E and the OGL, but I was at the Gen Con meeting where Scott Rouse and Bill Slavicsek were asking people what they thought WotC should do for the d20 License. Many representatives from the d20 industry were there, including Erik Mona, Chris Pramas, Gareth Skarka, some guy from Mongoose Publishing, and others.

The gist of the discussion was WotC wanting the new d20 License (which'll also have a new logo) to have some assurance of quality, which basically means finding a way to stop companies from putting out crappy d20 products (as opposed to purely OGL products, which they acknowledged that can't stop).

WotC basically said that they can't create any sort of in-house panel that'd review/approve products for the d20 logo, so they asked for other ideas. Several were discussed, including:

Charge a fee. This idea has publishers paying a premium for the right to use the d20 License with their products. It'd only last for a limited time (e.g. 2-3 years) before it'd have to be purchased again.

Eliminate the d20 License. This was surprisingly not dismissed outright, and the WotC guys seemed to actually consider it. Basically, this has them not releasing a new d20 STL at all, and instead letting the entire market operate OGL.

Continue as-is. The premise here is that the market is smarter, and smaller, than it was back in 2000, and that there's no need for any sort of regulation (and that regulation isn't feasible anyway), so things should just stay as they are.

Create a regulatory body. I didn't like this idea much, but unfortunately several of the larger publishers seemed to be quite receptive to it. This idea was basically that WotC grants the d20 License to 10-12 of the largest d20 publishers only. These publishers are then empowered to grant the license to other companies. The idea here is that this'd lead smaller companies to imprint with larger ones, and larger companies wouldn't put out smaller materials that were poor. Personally, I found this to be very unfair, as it'd make the OGL-only community into a ghetto (e.g. "If your OGL product's so great, why hasn't another company made it d20?"), and would strengthen the hand of major companies that were imprinting for smaller ones, letting them negotiate from an even more superior position.

What will actually happen is still up in the air at this point. The guys from WotC said they wanted to have a policy, and that they'd let the publishers know, but the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

Ahem. That said, I'm still looking forward to the rest of the IH, regardless of edition!

 

[GQuail]

I can see how a Ghost 'Class' or Vampire 'Class' would be neat, but what about a Dire Animal Template, or a Behemoth Template, do they need to be classes as well?

But does that mean Dragons (for instance) won't age, but instead gain class levels.

I imagine this will work to the same principle as the existing Monster Classes for PCs do, I.E., size boosts at certain points as a class feature. In the case of multi-stage monsters like Dragons, they may make different "base" dragons rather than the current kit system: a step I would prefer, because for the trademark critters of the game I find Dragons a real hassle to work with.

The simple way would be to tie Hit Dice into CR.

How is that different from waht we already do? Unless you mean making each HD equal 1 CR - in which case, that's basically what I'm talking about, just calling them "levels" instead of "HD".

 

[mercucio]

Beasts are a class, per Star Wars: Saga.

 

[historian]

Hey U_K, how's it going?

Well, it would probably be more like:

Standard Class Levels 1-30
Portfolio Levels 31-60 (or maybe 31-90?)
Dimensional Levels 61-90 (or maybe 91-210?)
Reality Levels 91-120 (or maybe 211-450?)

I glossed over this at first but it looks like it could have "big" potential (no hyperbole intended).

Do you have a rough idea as to how the "supra 30" class levels would work?

 

[sirwmholder]

My personal feelings for 4th Edition aside... I would release as a 3.5 product and wait and see if WotC schedules a 4th Edition Epic Handbook... if so wait for that to update date your material to 4th... in short I'd take a wait and see approach.

Hope this helps,
William Holder

 

[paradox42]

My personal feelings for 4th Edition aside... I would release as a 3.5 product and wait and see if WotC schedules a 4th Edition Epic Handbook... if so wait for that to update date your material to 4th... in short I'd take a wait and see approach.

Given WotC's support for Epic in 3.X (which is to say, hardly at all after the material was put into the SRD- even the 3.5 conversions were slipshod and required retooling to actually be useful in the little details), I'd be shocked if they released any rules for handling characters above 30th level within a year of the release of the new Player's Handbook.

This leaves a window of opportunity for somebody with a quality product that meshes well with the core rules. We here believe UK has a quality product for 3.5, or we wouldn't be posting here; if it can be updated to 4E rules within a reasonable timeframe (admittedly, that's doubtful if UK insists on being the sole designer/developer as he has in the past), then why not do it? Why not become the de facto standard for this regime of play?

Certainly, the 3.5 version should be released ASAP. But writing off 4th Edition when it's the 800-pound gorilla bearing down on the market is shooting UK in his starving-artist's foot, IMO- a 4E version is surely worth considering.

 

[jedrious]

Given WotC's support for Epic in 3.X (which is to say, hardly at all after the material was put into the SRD- even the 3.5 conversions were slipshod and required retooling to actually be useful in the little details), I'd be shocked if they released any rules for handling characters above 30th level within a year of the release of the new Player's Handbook.

This leaves a window of opportunity for somebody with a quality product that meshes well with the core rules. We here believe UK has a quality product for 3.5, or we wouldn't be posting here; if it can be updated to 4E rules within a reasonable timeframe (admittedly, that's doubtful if UK insists on being the sole designer/developer as he has in the past), then why not do it? Why not become the de facto standard for this regime of play?

Certainly, the 3.5 version should be released ASAP. But writing off 4th Edition when it's the 800-pound gorilla bearing down on the market is shooting UK in his starving-artist's foot, IMO- a 4E version is surely worth considering.

or, there are enough of us here with experience in balancing epic play that we could as a community create the 4th edition ELH and market it

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya mate!

Hey U_K, how's it going?

My usual, busy. Work for the next few days so appearances may be scarce online.

I glossed over this at first but it looks like it could have "big" potential (no hyperbole intended).

I don't know about that, but we'll see.

Do you have a rough idea as to how the "supra 30" class levels would work?

Not at the moment, and I am not that worried about it either.

I have a good idea how the Immortals and Sidereal stuff will work. The other stuff I will have to think about.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey William!

My personal feelings for 4th Edition aside... I would release as a 3.5 product and wait and see if WotC schedules a 4th Edition Epic Handbook... if so wait for that to update date your material to 4th... in short I'd take a wait and see approach.

Hope this helps,
William Holder

Absolutely. This talk is just pure speculation about what might transpire a year in the future.

Although I did jot down what Bestiary illustrations I would like to redo if I ever used the Volume One monsters in a 4th Edition book.