D&D 4E Your plans for 4e

[Plane Sailing]

RG, I hear tell that in Shadowrun, the implementation of Rituals is important to understanding how certain casters work.

Without going into details, are their any hints you can give about your impression on Rituals, the place they play, the effect on the gaming experience and similar stuff?

Cheers!

 

[Nifft]

What they're saying, at this point, is that 1 for 1 conversions will take some serious squinting.

Yeah, that's as expected. It's a whole new game. I'm using "porting" rather than "converting" deliberately.

The specific abilities my PCs will need are mostly strategic and tactical mobility (plane shift, phantom steed, teleport) and information gathering (outsider summoning & binding, divinations like discern location).

For character conversions, with limited class and race options in 4e, you're probably going to have to build new characters that approximate the old ones in class and ability.

If it helps, the PCs are human: two Wizards (one with a martial bent) and one Ranger. Cohorts will be fudged mercilessly, since each one is a miserable tangle of secrets.

Thanks, -- N

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Well, I've seen only the barest hint of rituals, from a playtest round a few months back -- nothing in the preview stuff at DDXP, so I can't tell you much about anything, really.

Luckily, like I said, I don't know much of anything to tell you. Here's my basic understanding of the way magic is shaking out, based on what's public from the DDXP stuff and some educated guesswork . . .

It looks to me like they've identified three categories of "magic" in the game. Attack magic, support magic, and more involved magic.

Attack magic has become most of the standard action at-will, encounter, and daily powers.

Support magic, by and large has become minor action powers (also at-will, encounter, and daily) or has been combined with attack powers (Buffs, for example, are not primarily side effects of some specific attacks that clerics and paladins make.)

Ritual magic, then, is where that "other" magic goes. Divination magic, for example, makes a great candidate for ritual magic. So does long-distance transportation magic, communication magic, some transmutations, etc. Probably some longer-lasting Buffs etc. That's all guesswork, but that seems to be the direction they're going.

Frankly, the idea of rituals is another one of the things that I really like about the game. It has always bothered me a little that with only a few exceptions all spells in the game can be cast in 6 seconds or less -- fantasy literature is full of examples of ritual magic, extended incantations, etc.

But, really, I've seen basically nothing of ritual magic so far, so this could be WAY off the mark.

-j

 

[Plane Sailing]

OK, thanks - pretty much what we known/guess already.

I was wondering since you'd played characters up to about 8th level.

On other news - I've got an entertaining discussion in a thread here about incongruencies about the Mirror Image and Displacement spells seen in a photo of the PHB. I know those are above the level of the PCs that you've played with, but I'm wondering... since the 13th-16th level spells we are seeing there seem relatively 'low powered' in conventional 3e thinking... how did spells and powers of the characters you've played up to 8th level "feel"?

Cheers

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Well, there version we played at 8th level was months ago, and we're aware of changes since then. And we had a brief mention of ritual magic on a character sheet but no real way to use it, so it was pretty much non-existent. The "feel" of the magic we did use --- attack powers and the like -- were a lot like souped up versions of the lower level stuff.

By way of a reaction to your thread about those two spells . . . I'd have to say first that I would shy away from making direct comparisons from one game to the other.

For one thing . . . I don't think level to level power comparison is going to work very well. Even if you tried to imagine a sort of exchange rate -- 2 levels of 3.5 = 3 levels of 4e, or something like that. I don't think there will be a good way to make that sort of transposition of material from one system to the other and have it hold up well for very long. What's going to be important is how those spells compare to the powers of other characters in 4e at those levels, not how well that compares to similarly named spells in the old edition.

-j

 

[Radiating Gnome]

one more thought, after finally skimming the whole way through your referenced thread . . .

I don't believe for a minute that the new system will not be without balance problems and a few clear mistakes. As far as I can tell, they've pushed through the playtesting process a lot faster than the 3.0 version did, and that one had it's own intractable problems that had to be fixed with 3.5. The game evolves and (hopefully) improves.

That said, I am totally on board with the idea of starting practically from scratch and being willing to change some of the core ideas of the game -- including the idea that casters get more and more powerful as the characters level.* They've clearly made a concerted effort to design a game where every class is fun to play all the way from 1 to 30. That means making wizards more flexible and effective at low levels, and probably less effective at higher levels. It also means making the healing efforts of paladins and clerics minor actions so that they can still take standard actions that are "fun" -- so they won't be relegated to support only roles.

Another choice they've made is to move away from direct simulation of a lot of mechanics in the interest of brevity and simplicity. Mirror image is an example of that effort. What they've decided to do is eliminate the time spent, every time a target with mirror image is attacked, going through "all right, Bonzo has 6 images and himself, so I'll roll an 8 sided and the attack will hit Bonzo on a 1, an image on a 2-7, and I'll just reroll if I get an 8".

Grognards will say "I like that! I'm not afraid to do that sort calculation and making that sort of roll! You didn't need to change that!"

But the Gorgnards need to accept that WOTC is not designing the game for them. The game is being designed for players who did not grow up with 1st and 2nd editions, with a completely new mechanic for everything the game tries to simulate. It's being designed for a broader audience, one that will wander away from mechanics like the 3.5 mirror image mechanic (or lack of real mechanic).

Maybe they're taking the effort to simplify the rules too far; I don't know. What I do know is that I find the philosophical underpinnings of the decisions they're making in the new edition to be powerful, revolutionary, and for me, right on target. When those philosophical ideas hit some of the concepts from previous editions, there is the clear potential for problems and some dissatisfaction among the faithful. But I think most of the faithful will come around, once they've had a chance to play.

*this is an idea that is debated in the thread you cite, but I'd argue that for a combat class to rock the house at high levels, it requires a very carefully constructed character, a very experienced player, and a very focused build. A caster at high level doesn't need those things to rock the house, they are pretty much rock and roll right out of the box.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

So, yes, I've drunk the kool-aid, it was grape, and it was wonderful.

 

[Nifft]

But, really, I've seen basically nothing of ritual magic so far, so this could be WAY off the mark.

Ah well. Thanks much anyway.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Pbartender]

Dragonborn will likewise be the ruling families of the Far East Asian-styled Empires.

Okay... I know it'll get jokes at the table, but I think the local name for Dragonborn is going to be the "Long-Wang", the "Dragon Kings".


RG, do you have any reassurances on how skill ranks increase in Shadowrun? I've heard rumors that it's similar to Star Wars SAGA, but different... Which doesn't really tell us much. It's one of my wife's biggest complaints about SAGA (not that it's a real big complaint), as she likes being able to micromanage her skill points and which skills get them.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Your wife will be disappointed, I fear. Skills are going to work, as they say, very much like SAGA. You'll get your attribute bonus + half your level + a "trained" bonus in skills you've selected as ones you've trained in. There may be other feats that allow you to invest a little more effort into skills, but the days of distributing individual skill points are basically over.

Again . . . the broader audience they're trying to reach will appreciate the simplification.

-j