WotC Blogs II

[Glyfair]

Even while on vacation James Wyatt has continued to update his blog. This post he is mostly talking about yesterday's D&D game, but he does talk about converting the characters from 3.5 to 4E.

But I still want to tell you about my D&D game yesterday. Can I tell you about my character?

I'm playing Travic—a paladin of a race that I don't think has been officially announced yet. He is not your run-of-the-mill goody-goody paladin. He swings a greatsword and lays the smite down on whoever he happens to be fighting against—demons are good, but any creepy monster will do in a pinch.

A couple of relevant issues dovetail in this character: character role and character conversion.

So this is a game Andy Collins has been running for . . . oh, nine levels now, playing once a month. Last month we finally took the plunge and converted over to 4e. So each of us took a look at our 8th-level characters and decided whether to attempt a conversion or create a new character from scratch.

Most of us converted. Now, I think Rob talked about this in his video interview, and we said it several times at GenCon: You can't really just convert a character directly from 3e to 4e. We pretended you could do that from 2e to 3e, but that conversion book was pretty well bogus. The fact is, as I explained it a lot at GenCon, that your character isn't what's on your character sheet: your character is the guy in your head. The character sheet is how the guy in your head interacts with the rules of the game. The rules of the game are different, so you'll be creating a new implementation of that character, but the character needn't change much. In fact, I propose that in 4e your character might actually be truer to your vision of him than in 3e. You might finally see her doing all the cool things you imagined her doing but that never quite came out on the 3e table.

So Corwyn, our human knight, became a human fighter. His player said yesterday that the character was informed by some of the features of the knight class, but that as a 4e fighter he was a better expression of what he'd wanted the character to be. (The fighter and the paladin pretty well ganged up on the poor knight and divvied his stuff between them.)

Zurio, the illumian spellthief, became a multiclassed half-elf rogue/wizard. His player, too, felt strongly that this multiclass combination was a better expression of what he'd wanted out of the spellthief class than anything in 3e, which actually was a huge relief to me—I'd been a little concerned about whether our multiclassing system was going to work. As to the race, well, here's some shocking news: the illumian won't appear in the first PH. Sorry. But half-elf was a good fit for this multiclass character.

Leroy, the mongrelfolk ranger, became a ranger of another race I can't recall at the moment. (He wasn't at the game yesterday—that's my feeble excuse.) Once again, sorry to have to break the news to the mongrelfolk fans. But the ranger fans should be quite pleased.

That left Larissa and Aash. Larissa was a catfolk druid who was more of an archer than a spellcaster (thanks to that level adjustment). Her player decided to start from scratch with a dwarf cleric. Aash was my xeph swordsage. That wasn't a concept that would be easy to translate at this point in the game's design.

And here's where we get into roles. In 4e terms, our previous party consisted of:
- The knight, a front-line kind of guy
- A ranger, a spellthief, a warlock (who has stepped out of the campaign for a while), a swordsage, and an archer druid, all sort of doing the single-target, high-damage job.
- A couple wands of cure X wounds, which served as the party healer.

Now we have this:
- Knight and paladin holding the front line
- Ranger and rogue/wizard in the high-damage role, with the ex-spellthief doing some AoE stuff mixed in.
- Cleric doing the clericky thing.

The interesting thing is that both the fighter and the paladin are greatsword wielders, giving up some AC (a shield) in exchange for more damage, and thus leaning a bit toward the higher-damage role. All of which is to say, again, that the roles aren't there as straightjackets, but to help you build a party that'll work well together. We were still playing the fighter and paladin we wanted to play, filling our role in different ways while kickin' monster butt with our greatswords.

Huh. Our cleric wasn't there yesterday, and we did just fine. Go figure.

I feel like there was more I was going to talk about, but I forgot.

 

[DaveMage]

He touched on pretty much why a conversion guide is impossible - there are thousands (millions?) of possible race/class combos in 3.5e, so there's no way a comprehensive 4e conversion guide would even be possible. (Although I do believe, as a marketing tool, it's a good idea to put something together anyway.)

...And this is also why you're not going to be able to play as wide a range of characters in 4e for quite some time.

 

[Glyfair]

I think it also touches on something I've mentioned. There seems to be some "common wisdom" out there that the difference between 3.5 and 4E will be bigger than between 2nd edition and 3E. The reason given is that they had a conversion guide to 3E and said it wouldn't work for 4E.

He again points out that the reason isn't that 4E is a bigger jump, but because the 3E conversion guide didn't work. Yes, 4E might be a bigger jump, but the conversion guide issue doesn't point to that.

 

[Intrope]

SOunds like +14 Conceal to me.

Maybe it gets to roll a D20+14 to negate an attack roll should it roll higher than the attack roll? I am sick of concealment ignoring the attacker's skill, except for blindfight.

That would make it work exactly like the Jedi Block talent (make a skill check in Use the Force to block a melee attack).

Probably, the displacement ability wouldn't have any per-attack penalty (Block gets harder with each block check you make during the round).

I like this idea!

 

[Mephistopheles]

Zurio, the illumian spellthief, became a multiclassed half-elf rogue/wizard. His player, too, felt strongly that this multiclass combination was a better expression of what he'd wanted out of the spellthief class than anything in 3e, which actually was a huge relief to me—I'd been a little concerned about whether our multiclassing system was going to work.

(Bolding mine)

Was anyone else a little surprised by the portion I bolded? Development is two years in, release is eight months away, and there was/is doubt about whether or not something like multiclassing is going to work?

I've seen a few comments littered through the various blogs and features on the WotC site that give the impression that some core game feature mechanics are not yet nailed down. I'm trying to avoid being alarmist about any of the information we're getting about 4E but I'm still not sure what to make of the implications of these kinds of comments.

 

[Klaus]

He touched on pretty much why a conversion guide is impossible - there are thousands (millions?) of possible race/class combos in 3.5e, so there's no way a comprehensive 4e conversion guide would even be possible. (Although I do believe, as a marketing tool, it's a good idea to put something together anyway.)

...And this is also why you're not going to be able to play as wide a range of characters in 4e for quite some time.

I think the advice they're giving is good: think of your character, then rebuild him from the ground up with the new rules. It's like "I have this D&D character, and I'll stat him up in True20, Star Wars Saga and Grim Tales".

 

[Glyfair]

Was anyone else a little surprised by the portion I bolded? Development is two years in, release is eight months away, and there was/is doubt about whether or not something like multiclassing is going to work?

Who said multi-classing was one of the first things they worked on? Maybe it's a pretty recent change to the system. Indeed, maybe they did change it before, but rejected those methods and came up with the version they are using now.

Also, maybe James didn't have to deal with the multi-classing method. While he's been working on the rules and the game, it's clear that the story is his main focus. Perhaps he knew the multi-classing rules, but never had a chance to see them in action before this.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

(Bolding mine)

Was anyone else a little surprised by the portion I bolded? Development is two years in, release is eight months away, and there was/is doubt about whether or not something like multiclassing is going to work?

I've seen a few comments littered through the various blogs and features on the WotC site that give the impression that some core game feature mechanics are not yet nailed down. I'm trying to avoid being alarmist about any of the information we're getting about 4E but I'm still not sure what to make of the implications of these kinds of comments.

That did stand out for me, as well. Shouldn't multiclassing have been written along with the classes? And shouldn't they have been in development over the course of the whole project?

Of course, I don't know what the expected timeline is for development of this sort. How long did it take to write Iron Heroes?

 

[Glyfair]

Before the WotC employees start up this weeks traffic (James, being on vacation, doesn't count ), I thought I'd throw up more random statistics.

Most entries

1. Mike Mearls (17)
2. James Wyatt (13)
3. David Noonan (10)

Most viewed

1. Mike Mearls (~13,500)
2. James Wyatt (~11,750)
3. Rich Baker (~8,000)

 

[hong]

Who said multi-classing was one of the first things they worked on? Maybe it's a pretty recent change to the system. Indeed, maybe they did change it before, but rejected those methods and came up with the version they are using now.

Also, maybe James didn't have to deal with the multi-classing method. While he's been working on the rules and the game, it's clear that the story is his main focus. Perhaps he knew the multi-classing rules, but never had a chance to see them in action before this.

To be honest, I suspect that the designers had different ideas on how multiclassing should work, and James' idea wasn't the one that was adopted in the end.