Pax Prime seminar 2012 juicy news!

[Bran Mak Morn]

wotc_dnd - PAX Seminar: The Future of D&D
Mearls says that the next Playtest Packet will be released in october showing levels 1-10 with more magic items and monsters!!

 

[tuxgeo]

Once again I'll have to wait till it comes out on YouTube, because that streams more smoothly. "TwitchTV" is unwatchable on this PC -- it herks and jerks, the mouth movements don't coincide with the words, and the sound is too low for me to hear clearly on my laptop's built-in speakers.
(Nice try, though, Twitchers. Timing was excellent! Delivery? Not so much.)

 

[gyor]

My Birthdays in October, it's like Mearls is giving me a present to celebrate!

 

[The Shadow]

More tidbits:

The idea is to make the core 4 classes very customizable, but the other classes to be more heavily story-based. For example, they're thinking of making rangers more like an actual organization (or more than one) with its own code of conduct.

There will be an arcane-bloodline sorcerer, perhaps even fluffed in terms of studying to bring out one's innate magical character, for those who want a spell-point wizard.

They are considering having specialist wizards, rather than barring schools, be able to retain or regain spell slots devoted to their specialty. ie, an illusionist could cast Fireball, but he'd lose the slot; but if he cast an illusion, he could get it back after a short rest or something. In other words, more of a carrot than a stick.

Epic play is going to be treated less as an extension of levels 1-10 and more like a transformation of the game. In fact, though they didn't say so, it sounds a lot like 'name level' - they did explictly mention founding kingdoms as a possibility.

Only the basic races (elf, dwarf, halfling, human) and the core 4 classes are presumed to exist in D&D worlds. Everything else is a setting option - whether a published setting or a DM's homebrew world.

They intend to support a number of different past settings even in the core books - they gave the example of the minotaur entry in the Monster Manual having a sidebar mentioning that they are a playable race in Dragonlance, and giving stats for how to play them. (Which, of course, any DM could use in their own world if desired.)

 

[The Shadow]

Oh, and I forgot to mention multiclassing! Big bit of news here.

It will be largely like 3e, however to avoid dipping, they'll have a special "multiclass" version of each class in which you ramp up to the class' full abilities. They also mentioned that there might be something like prestige classes that would only have multiclass versions.

To be more specific, they said they'd have a "multiclass table" for each class that would specify what you would get for each level of it you take.

EDIT: They also said we wouldn't see any multiclassing rules for several playtest rounds yet.

 

[tlantl]

I was pleasantly surprised by the description of specialist wizards like the Illusionist getting to cast their illusions differently than other school spells.

I'm curious as to what they plan to do. Will it be like the warlock's invocations that renew after a short rest or will they go with giving them at will slots to put spells into for use whenever they want.


I really like they way they've explained their thinking where the game is concerned. I always looked at D&D from the perspective of a living game world where the rules allowed me to build things the way I imagined them and the rules worked to enhance this rather than constraining me to a narrow path that doesn't fit with the way I want them to work.

We can only wait and see since the the devil is in the details.

 

[RangerWickett]

I like it.

I also dig, "Oh, you want to be a skilled warrior who roams the forests? Okay, you can be a fighter, and pick your own style, and fiddle around with a ton of options. Or you can be a ranger, which is a specific type of person who fits that archetype, and gets these specific powers/traits/skills/etc."

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I was pleasantly surprised by the description of specialist wizards like the Illusionist getting to cast their illusions differently than other school spells.

I'm curious as to what they plan to do. Will it be like the warlock's invocations that renew after a short rest or will they go with giving them at will slots to put spells into for use whenever they want.

I'm guessing that's what Mearls was talking about here:

we’re also looking at spells that a wizard can regain through five minutes of rest and meditation. Some of the spells that came up as the most iconic in D&D, such as feather fall, are fairly low on the power spectrum. By making such spells reusable, we can make them more appealing and, if we do things right, make them an even bigger part of the game.

For instance, feather fall’s original incarnation affected only one creature or object. That changed to cover multiple targets in 3E. If we make feather fall reusable, we would likely specify that it affects only the caster. In practice, it becomes a safeguard for a wizard against a specific kind of threat.

Other spells ripe for this treatment include similar safeguards for a wizard and blast spells traditionally overshadowed by standbys such as fireball. For instance, ice storm has traditionally done less damage than fireball. It can mire creatures in snow and ice, but only for a moment. If we can make ice storm reusable, we can increase its power and give it a clear use for a caster even if an up-leveled fireball is a more devastating attack.

So that would suggest that they're talking about encounter spells here. The question remains whether you'd have separate slots for those spells, and whether you have to recharge the same spell or if you can switch mid-day. (So if I use Feather Fall to jump off a cliff, when I take a short rest can I prepare a different encounter spell in its slot since I'm already at the bottom, or can I only "recharge" Feather Fall?)

This seems like it could be moderately cool or it could be somewhat confusing, and either way it seems very likely to make some traditionalists angry.

 

[gweinel]

PAX Seminar: The Future of D&D

Still have not seen any link here of the seminar, so here it is: wotc_dnd - PAX Seminar: The Future of D&D

Some things that i picked up as interesting points of the lecture:

- The next playtest may be around October.
- The specialties wizards might have some kind of encounter kind of powers (instead of the daily ones they have now).
- They intent to have the magic level system tuned according to the preference of the players. So there will be rules for a low magic campaign and rules for a high magic campaign. (probably this is old news...)
- There will be guideness to reskin the classes. For instance to make a wizard with the sorceror rules.
- Multiclassing will probably look feel like more the 3rd edition multiclassing.

Few new infos imho.

 

[Scipio202]

More tidbits:

The idea is to make the core 4 classes very customizable, but the other classes to be more heavily story-based. For example, they're thinking of making rangers more like an actual organization (or more than one) with its own code of conduct.

Did they make it sound more like a Paladin's code of behavior, or more like the 1E/2E hierarchy for monks and druids? I think an organizational hierarchy could be interesting, as long as they keep it separate from level limits. Challenge the arch-ranger to take his leadership role, not so you can level up to 12.