Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Najo" data-source="post: 3943600" data-attributes="member: 9959">This edition is aiming to compete with MMOs yes, but not by joining them, by streamlining D&D and playing its strengths against the weaknesses of MMOs. D&D 4e is embracing roleplaying, story, fluff and drama, questing as a means for advancing, heroic focus adventure focused on the players. They intend to compete with MMOs by 1) appealing to casual players for the first time (the non-gamer friend or girlfriend/ wife who plays WOW) 2) making D&D more visual and fluff driven. 3) make D&D WAY more intuitive and faster to DM. They are re-establishing what D&D is and making it as appealing to the entire market as possible. LOTR has been done to death. Fantasy is in most cases, edgier and gritter, as our action heroes in film, television, comics and books. Look at 300, Transformers, Heroes, Lost, Marvel comic's Civil War, or Game of Thrones and you will see what is successful right now. D&D can't live in the 70's or 80's and make it.The roles are to help define and guide the classes for new players and for game designers to work with. Look at magic the gathering's color pie for how open ended you can make a "role".I understand your frustrated and concerned. But alot of these worries are either wrong or do not have evidence yet to support them. Talent Trees are not going to be in the game, the closest form may be what Star Wars Saga has, which is grouping of talents into general areas and a couple prerequsites. You still choose the talents you want to have, and they replace class features. Feats are still open eneded and you are getting more of them.As for the bonuses, they need to be as intuitive and easy for a new gamer to work with as possible, or no new customer. I know D&D 4e is cutting out ability loss, negetive levels, touch AC and flat footed, so dexterity limited by armor is a natural change too. The designers have stated that the game still has effects that do these things, just that it is done in ways that do not hamper play time (i.e. from readjusting your whole character sheet), instead there will be negative effects placed on you. Armor could "encumber" you and give a penalty to certain tests and bascially be working against dexterity as it does now, but with out the recalculating of your secondary stats. Finally, the melee classes do need more to do than swing their sword every round. Taunting, distracting enemy and drawing heat is all things that heroes do in other forms of entertainment. That is the reason they do it in MMOs too. Why not here. The designers have flat out said that they tried a taunt rule and it was totally wrong for the game. They said that taunting as you see in MMOs is NOT in the game.There will still be ways to represent these things. My understanding is that characters are getting more flexibility and that multiclassing has been overhauled and balanced. I am sure we will find ways to represent what prestige classes were, if not, then Forgotten Realms is going to have some issues when it releases.Dragonborn allow D&D to own their mythology now. Most players like the wizard implements. WOTC is doing this for all classes, giving powers and class effects instead of just raw ability bonuses. It makes magic items more special and interesting. With that said, they said magic items are rarer and the Christmas tree effect is supposedly gone. This is part of that.My understanding on combat is as follows:1) Classes have more options than before. You will have tactical chooses based on class abilities, magic items, and other actions you character can take.2) Combat is more fluid and involves movement, position and terrain more than before.3) Monsters are simpier to run, their CR is based on total xp value (so you can throw 100 goblins at a level 10 party and have it work), and they have tactical options too. Lots of DM support to make the monsters more intersting for the players to encounter. 4) Combat runs faster and more intense. So far, the playtest reports have supported all of this and more. Skills are streamlined yes, but the same as they were in Star Wars RPG SAGA edition. You should check Star Wars out, everyone was happy with 90% of the changes and begged for WOTC to do it to D&D 4e. Well, it is happening and then some. I think WOTC is going to surprise you.</blockquote>

Verification