Danny and I are back from the D&D XP. I decided not to pay for the flaky hotel wi-fi to be able to do updates from the show floor. We played three games today: the first Living Forgotten Realms adventure,”Escape from Sembia” (which essentially ended in the second encounter as a TPK), press dungeon delve with James Wyatt, and a dungeon delve with Mike Mearls. So I have a little bit more play experience now, though the people who played through the entire first two LFR adventures will have a lot more (especially those who got to fight a dragon at the end of the second LFR module!)
Here’s just a collection of random 4e rules things I haven’t seen anywhere else. Keep in mind that some of these are very much conjecture. I list the source first.
- Sara Girard: Mounted combat is a higher level Paladin option. (She plays a Dragonborn Paladin, and she let slip that she wasn’t high enough level for a mount, but when pressed further, she gave us a “no comment.”)
- Rob Heinsoo: The same dynamic exists at all levels for characters. Without magic items, characters that don’t begin their career flying and teleporting won’t have powers even at epic that do that.
- Rob Heinsoo: Epic levels are in a bigger scale. More emphasis on Large and Huge monsters, and covering larger battles (as in terms of size of the field of battle.)
- Rob Heinsoo: In additional to difficult terrain playing a role on the battle, there will also be other types of interesting terrain and magical terrain.
- Rob Heinsoo: “Feather me yon oaf” had its name changed, but apparently there are those in R&D who still champion that name.
- Scott Rouse: Power Decks will probably become a product, and are something that they took the idea from the community for.
- Andy Collins: Monk as Martial Striker? “At least 50% wrong.”
- RPGA GM: Detect Magic is a ritual.
- RPGA GM: Skill Challenges. It was summed up as before you make a skill check, you pick if you want low, medium, or high difficulty. The higher the roll needed, the greater the reward if you pull it off. In the game, the same mechanic was used to use Streetwise to navigate a city, negotiate with a merchant, and move stealthily through the streets. Another example given to me by another player was in a bazaar they were able to combine a Thievery check with the Wizard casting Mage Hand to bring a tent down while they grabbed some stuff.
- RPGA GM: The dragon at the end of LFR2 has 280 HP. He is beatable by first level PCs, though it takes a lot of luck and a little niceness by the DM for the dragon to come out of the shadows.
- James Wyatt: Three monsters in the MM that can be used as PCs: Gnomes, who “hide”, Orcs are strong, and Shadar-Kai who are dexterous, can teleport, and become incorporeal. Players could trade tokens to “unlock” these races for use in the Living Forgotten Realms RPGA campaign. (Here’s the board outside the Delve, but they don’t have stats.)
- Mike Mearls: Minions are destroyed by any hit. Someone did literally one point of damage to a minion zombie and killed it.
Don’t forget that Gnomes, unfortunately, will NOT have claw attacks.
James Wyatt in gnome voice: “Rawr! I’m a monster!”
I have gotten the impression that the primary emphasis this weekend has been combat. Is this accurate? I find myself wishing that a little time has been made available for non-combat situational resolution.
(I’d call that role-playing, but every time I do, somebody hands me a lecture about role-playing comes from within, not a system.)
I mean resolution of skills that aren’t combat based. It’s probably too late to plug for that, but if you have anything in your notes I’d love to hear it.
Jim, that’s a good point. The Dungeon Delve was just designed to be a quick, 30 minute, all combat dungeon, and that’s what we got to play the most of because it was the easiest and quickest to get into. The 5 hour game we signed up for probably featured a bit more non-combat stuff (and in fact, featured some of the skill check stuff I talk about) but we were TPK’d in the second combat before we could see a lot of that.
My impression of the RPGA in general is that it’s pretty heavy combat. I’ll put it this way: I didn’t see anything at all that indicated that this edition of D&D would be any worse for roleplaying that a previous edition. I hope that helps somewhat!
It does sir! Or at least I’m appreciative of the reply and the reassurance.
Hey.. since I got your attention, here’s another question. Have you heard anything about the GSL? And not when it’s going to be out for the 3rd parties… but rather about what it will contain?
I’ll give you some context:
*Is acceptance of the GSL going to have a clause that states that acceptance requires giving up the OGL for that specific company? (I.e. we all know the OGL can’t be revoked, but will acceptance of the GSL have a condition preventing the use of both?)
*No metallic Dragons in the MM1? According to Aint It Cool News who released their 3rd in a series of reviews. This would suggest that Metallic Dragons won’t be available for 3rd party use?
*Clauses that prevent 3rd parties from creating their own classes and races until WOTC releases their own version?
I guess I should have thrown these questions out earlier.
I know they stated at the Seminar that they wanted strong companies to also have campaign setting available (different from their own, but expecting some overlap).. I’m just trying to get a feel for how practical that is going to be for one that is already in existence and is faced with the choice whether to convert or not.
If you have any comments, I’d be delighted to hear them!
Unfortunately, we didn’t have any questions for Scott Rouse about the GSL, and they didn’t cover it in the seminar. I can give you my educated guesses though!
-I don’t think a specific company have their OGL revoked by going with a GSL. However, GSL probably does say that a specific product cannot be covered under both… otherwise, there might be some legal trickery to build 4e out of OGL elements.
-I’m 90% sure Metallic Dragons are in. They talked about the changes to them (Adamantine and Iron in, Bronze and Brass I think out). They even showcased the Adamantine dragon for “appreciate a dragon day.”
-At least one company (Necromancer Games) has announced a product that involves 4e versions of classic races/classes. That doesn’t prove anything, but I find it unlikely that WotC has a laundry list of possible classes sitting around that they’d restrict from others publishing. Along with that, Andy Collins said specifically that they haven’t even started designing many of the classes people are asking for.
Oh, I meant to add: they expect to have a lot of content up on D&D Insider that will give preview races/classes. I know a lot of people aren’t hot about D&DI, but that’d be their answer for where to find ways to convert existing material in a campaign.
I appreciate all the responses!
To disclose, I’m a fan of Paizo’s Pathfinder (and I am *not* associated or affiliated with them in any way other than being their customer). The community has been fairly opposed to 4th edition, but like any community it’s composed of individuals with their own opinions.
The Paizo Editorial Team has been very non-reactionary and open minded concerning 4th edition when speaking to the fan base, expressing confidence that the WOTC Team can make a good game- though they remain cautious in respect to whether they are going to adopt it. If there has been a backlash, it’s been the fan reaction.
As a fan and as a customer, I guess my interest is in whether there’s anything that would prevent conversion to 4th Edition.. in terms of “this concept no longer exists” or “this monster that the setting was dependent upon is not longer available under the GSL”.. That sort of thing.
If a company has to scrap their campaign setting in order to convert, then they’re not going to convert. Which can put a fan in a position to choose between Editions, or play both in some fashion. Whereas if conversion is possible…
And these are not questions to you specifically, no one is really going to know that until the GSL has been released, but hence my interest…
Consider this is a bug in the ear of what this DnD GM while following the news.
I hear ya. I’m a big fan of the Pathfinder series too. I was thinking about running Burnt Offerings in 4e myself.
There are definitely going to be things that don’t exist right away in 4e. Many of the playtests talk about redoing their characters as different class combos, and just keeping their same concept. That’s not going to work for everyone, but that should be some idea.
It occurs to me that I did get some email addresses if I have follow up questions, I may be able to ask some things about the GSL.
Hey, you mentioned that you had a TPK – what are the death and dying rules? Piecing the preview together with what we’ve learned this weekend, I’m guessing it involves getting a save each round and dying if you fail X such saves; are you abole to fill in the details?
Jeff: Our TPK was actually the result of incorrect rules. You can go into negative hitpoints up to your bloodied number (half your hp), no matter how negative you are up to that number you roll a save. 9 or lower and you get a check mark, 10+ and you stabilize, three check marks and you’re dead. If you roll a 20 on the save you go to 0 and immediately use one of your healing surges (typically puts you up to between 5-8 hp’s).
The TPK happened because our DM never let us stabilize, instead we just kept rolling saves while in the negatives and either we got a check, or had to wait until next turn. I hated this rule at the time, and was VERY happy when we played with Mike Mearls that he said this was incorrect.
My impression is that this makes it equally likely that you’ll die if you’re at -1 as if you’re at -10 or -13 (if your bloodied is high enough).
RPGA is not mostly combats it just the ruleset we choose to focus the 4th edition previews on. So please don’t let those color your impressions.
As to the dying rules and rolling we’ll just have to apologize on that one. As you know the rules are always changing and R&D is always tweaking things and it’s really easy to mix up something that’s been changed while in the thick of things at the table.
Fair enough, Dave! I haven’t been seriously into RPGA since back in middle 2e, so I’m glad to hear that you deliver the full RPG experience!
We weren’t mad at the GM for flubbing the rules, we knew that it was tough to absorb all the rules in a short span of time. We just wanted to play more (and not die.)
Well most of my DM’s were instructed (in the 5 hour events) that is people died to just let them come back the next fight and keep having fun (the point after all). He must not have gotten the memo.
Wavester: We actually really enjoyed the DM experience we had, and as I said in my comment at the time I only had a problem with the -rule- that was being used and can fully understand how things could get mixed up or changed.
Many of the DM’s were actually very good about making sure things kept moving forward, despite numerous rules inconsistencies and questions, which is a very hard thing to do. My comments were in no way meant to be directed towards RPGA or any of your DM’s, and were simply focused on the rules that were being presented at D&D XP.