D&D 4E On the set of 4E: the Beholder

[wedgeski]

Heheh, very good Wizards. Very good.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Incidentally, I count ten eye stalks.

Cool, though that almost a shame.

If there were 12 stalks on the large beholder, each eye could draw it's fire from a seperate intersection of the beholder's 3 hex space.

 

[mhensley]

The only mechanics mentioned were:

a) "solo" monster means that an entire party will fight it

and

b) the flesh-to-stone eyebeam has a gradual effect rather than a sudden all-or-nothing effect.

a) Hasn't the beholder always been used mainly as a "solo" monster? That's no real change to me.

b) Doesn't this mean more record keeping and stat adjustments during combat? This sounds bad IMO.

 

[GQuail]

a) Hasn't the beholder always been used mainly as a "solo" monster? That's no real change to me.

It's important because the rest of the monster family in 4E is undergoing changes to make them used mre in groups than in 3E: so the fact that the Beholder (and presumably some other big guns) are explicitly going to be "Solo" is definatly news.

b) Doesn't this mean more record keeping and stat adjustments during combat? This sounds bad IMO.

Depends quite how much is involved: and since it looks like 4E stats will be a bit less complex from other previews, it might not be so bad as doing the same thing in 4E.

I would imagine petrification will go something like this: "When you get hit by the power, you take a -2 to Dex and -1 square of speed. You get a further -2 to Dex and -1 square of movement at the start of every round until somone casts Dispel magic on you/you pass a save/you give the GM five bucks/whatever"

This resembles the poison counters shown in the Drider preview, so it's probably going to be standard throughout: players will expect minor changes when they get infected by disease, or frozen by an ice attack, or whatever. It's arguably a lot more relevant than the current set-up for these powers, which is either instantaneous or doens't really matter. (See: Poisons & Diseases, where the secondary damage doens't end up mattering all that much past a certain point: especially for NPCs.)

 

[pawsplay]

a) Hasn't the beholder always been used mainly as a "solo" monster? That's no real change to me.

b) Doesn't this mean more record keeping and stat adjustments during combat? This sounds bad IMO.

Your point b is what sprung to my mind.

 

[pawsplay]

Ok, I finally signed up for D&D Insider, because it's a cartoon. However, I'm kind of sorry now. Not that amusing to me.

 

[Simon Marks]

b) Doesn't this mean more record keeping and stat adjustments during combat? This sounds bad IMO.

Maybe, maybe not.

3.5 was full of them, remeber (fatigued, -2 str, -2 dex = a whole host of minor adjustments!, Bulls Strength, Enlarge, Bless, Inspire Heroics... etc.).

So, if we assume that in any given round, a mid-level character in 3.5 had 3-5 Stat adjustments depending on who they were - Clerics and Fighters had the most.

4ed seems to be getting rid of a number of these effects - so until we get the rules we don't know if overall there will be more or less record keeping.

Sure, if it was added to 3.5 then it would involve more bookkeeping and adjustments. But this isn't 3.5.

My guess is that, overall, there will be less 'Stat Adjustments'. There will still be some, it appears.

 

[Imaro]

...
b) Doesn't this mean more record keeping and stat adjustments during combat? This sounds bad IMO.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing...another thing, to add to this line of thinking a little further, is that if 4th ed. pushes combat with larger groups of foes (and yes I realize the beholder is a "solo" monster, but still...) how many tracker type powers will be involved in a combat, and how many different types of these effects will be ongoing at the same time for each PC. It seems like this could be a potentially large headache for a DM to keep track of and could also cause a drastic slow down in actual play.

The difference between this and 3e's conditions are that most conditions in 3e are a one-shot deal...note it on your character sheet and it stays the same until the duration is over. This escalation of conditions in 4e seems even more bookkeeping than 3e's conditions.

 

[withak]

Well, after struggling with D&DI/Gleemax/whatever for about 10 minutes, I was finally able to log in and view the cartoon.

I would have preferred more substance, but given how much real information is doled out in blog posts and whatnot, I guess we got a good deal of concrete info.

I think I'm really going to like effects that slowly turn characters to stone, and I hope this is standard to all the beasties that would have them. I wonder if this will allow PCs to "break" out of the effect or otherwise somehow avoid being statufied?

 

[frankthedm]

In 4E, if you want to have 20 monsters vs. a 5th level party, you don't use 2nd level monsters, you just use 20 5th level Minions.

That doesn't solve the "Endless Horde" of monsters issue, but maybe if you used Minions one level lower than the PC's ...

10-100 first level minions sound about right against a fifth level party...