D&D 4E New "Confessions of a Full Time Wizard" - 4e tidbits!

[Sitara]

MM will still be autohit. Guys, no matter what else changes, THAT is one sacred cow no one is going to mess with.

As for differences, apart from autohit vs reflex def, Fireblast will do fire damage. Useful against undead, slimes, blobs, roasting meat, etc.

 

[Wolfspider]

Wow! So in 4e you can create character attributes using Point Buy instead of just rolling them randomly with dice?!?!

How revolutionary! How so unlike 3.5!

I'm sold.

 

[dmccoy1693]

My fellow party members are of the convection oven variety, taking only about 20 minutes, by themselves, to conceive their characters.

Odd, this is how long it takes me to do my character sheet now with 3.5. I may take days or even a week to come up with a concept, but once the concept and something I like about the character's history is decided, the char sheet is a snap.

And for the record, I do the same with other RPGs and it usually takes me about the same amount of time, both with concept creation and charsheet writeup.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I surprised no one mentioned the bits about the char sheet yet. Apparently there will be a space for personality, and wizard will offer editable self-calculating sheets.

I'm glad there's a first level spell(yes spell!) called fireblast. I hope it scales like the warlocks arcane blast.

I noticed this, but it mentioned that it was a prototype and I assume that it is probably part of the D&D Insider suite of tools. It would be nice if they had an offline, free version of the character sheet to use that was form-fillable self-calculating.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

re choosing magic missile, fireblast and burning hands: Any idea yet whether at-will and per-encounter macros will be attached to a particular key, or will they let you move them around your keyboard?

For the DI? Interface is unknown, though somehow I doubt it'll be an actual computer game.

(troll-feeding mode: ON)

And then only if you need to pop one or both of your trinkets, and hopefully you won't have anything that triggers the GCD.

(troll-feeding mode: OFF)

Brad

 

[Wormwood]

How revolutionary! How so unlike 3.5!

Well, point buy isn't in the 3.5 Player's Handbook, so I kinda see her point.

 

[Gundark]

It was a fun read, I really liked the piece.

With 4e I've gone from excited to neutral, and I'm beginning swing back to becoming excited about playing 4e...which bugs me as I hate really looking forward to something.

 

[TerraDave]

It could have been so good, except for this:

J.C. Wizards??

For elititst tabatha? More like Wizards Fifth Avenue.

Oh, and I had a player takes days (or was it weeks?) to pick his last feat at 1st level.

 

[sjmiller]

Wow! So in 4e you can create character attributes using Point Buy instead of just rolling them randomly with dice?!?!

How revolutionary! How so unlike 3.5!

I'm sold.

Gotta say, this column has solidified my decision on D&D 4e. I am sure other people love it, but for me, D&D and point buy character creation systems are mutually exclusive. When I create D&D characters I expect to be rolling dice for attributes. If I want to play a point buy fantasy game, I will pull out my GURPS and play that. That little bit of information pushed me from "I am going to continue playing 3e at least until this campaign is over, possibly longer," to "I really don't see how 4e is D&D anymore, I don't think I will bother." It just strikes me as another "let's change it because we can" situation. As I said, I am sure lots of people love the change to point buy. I just don't like it.

 

[WizarDru]

re choosing magic missile, fireblast and burning hands: Any idea yet whether at-will and per-encounter macros will be attached to a particular key, or will they let you move them around your keyboard?

I see what you did there.

How revolutionary! How so unlike 3.5!]

I kinda wonder if the phrase "You start with six base numbers and get to improve them with points you can distribute where you like. I dumped a bunch into Intelligence and Wisdom, and then bumped up Charisma because someone has to sweet talk the minions." was a hint that they're not using the same point buy where you start at 8s...but instead you use the elite array or something similar as a kickpoint? Presumably you would get fewer points but would end up still getting appreciable stats.