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So what do you think will happen with it? Will it be a compromise of 3x and 4 or a different creature all together? I imagine it will be something of a cross of the two, with essentials being a testing ground. I imagine the DDi subscription will become even more important to the process and the physical books less important to a degree. Anyway, hypothesize away!

I am guessing it will involve dice and there will be a group that loves it and a group that thinks it is an abomination upon mankind.

I hope they bring back the 3e edition alignment system I want my Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral back! It would be cool if there was a hero or paragon

class that was themed around damage reduction as well.

Cheesecat wrote:I hope they bring back the 3e edition alignment system I want my Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral back! I would be cool if there was a hero or paragon class that was themed around damage reduction as well.

The only real advantage I see to re-adding alignment would be if the rules key off it. I am one of those people who seems to have a history of seeing alignment used as either a club to make player characters do what the GM wants or as an excuse by the player to do whatever they want... both can be obnoxious.

OTOH, if the rules key off it, such as having a lot of spells that do more or less damage to chaotic creatures, that's fine. Make the rules interesting, not just there.

I'd also like to see 4th's removal or de-emphasis of world-breaker spells kept. I'm not talking about the metamagic exploit in 3.0 that allows a low-level spell to be sued to nuke a city, but common stuff like 'detect evil' that makes a lot of 'mystery' plot-lines potentially a lot less fun (especially as a Paladin at-will). If there is a 'detect evil' it needs to be either part of a combat-limited ability (maybe a limited self-buff, but only against Evil creatures) or if intended as an investigative tool, written such that it isn't absolute. An idea I've always liked, adapted from a similar power in a white wolf game, is that 'evil' leaves traces, so a crime scene might register as evil. A victim would register as evil soon after being harmed. And the evil guy might be able to hide or lower their personal evil-ness, especially if they're in-the-know about magic or whatever.

Resurrection is another tricky spell. I think 4.0's version is both a bit more common and a bit more limited... 'Murder' becomes a bit less meaningful if it can be fixed with a suitable expenditure. Makes it more of an inconvenience.

Balance wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:I hope they bring back the 3e edition alignment system I want my Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral back! I would be cool if there was a hero or paragon class that was themed around damage reduction as well.

The only real advantage I see to re-adding alignment would be if the rules key off it. I am one of those people who seems to have a history of seeing alignment used as either a club to make player characters do what the GM wants or as an excuse by the player to do whatever they want... both can be obnoxious.

OTOH, if the rules key off it, such as having a lot of spells that do more or less damage to chaotic creatures, that's fine. Make the rules interesting, not just there.

I'd also like to see 4th's removal or de-emphasis of world-breaker spells kept. I'm not talking about the metamagic exploit in 3.0 that allows a low-level spell to be sued to nuke a city, but common stuff like 'detect evil' that makes a lot of 'mystery' plot-lines potentially a lot less fun (especially as a Paladin at-will). If there is a 'detect evil' it needs to be either part of a combat-limited ability (maybe a limited self-buff, but only against Evil creatures) or if intended as an investigative tool, written such that it isn't absolute. An idea I've always liked, adapted from a similar power in a white wolf game, is that 'evil' leaves traces, so a crime scene might register as evil. A victim would register as evil soon after being harmed. And the evil guy might be able to hide or lower their personal evil-ness, especially if they're in-the-know about magic or whatever.

Resurrection is another tricky spell. I think 4.0's version is both a bit more common and a bit more limited... 'Murder' becomes a bit less meaningful if it can be fixed with a suitable expenditure. Makes it more of an inconvenience.

I find the alignment system a great role-playing tool as it helps me think about what my character would do in certain situations.

I hope they keep the current monster/NPC design and the guts of the class design stuff. Mechanically, I don't have a big problem with 4th, maybe some stuff for outside of combat past rituals would be good. They could bring back skill points and I wouldn't weep.

What I want them to change is the feel and flavour of fourth. Dim down the lightshow that combat is currently, mix in some more realistic and less cartoony art along with the current styles, and generally accomadate something other than high fantasy epics in the feel and tone of the material. I'd hope they'd take the Underdark book as a benchmark for quality for their setting/splat books.

I'll just stick with 3.5

I've got a library's worth of books sitting around, so I highly doubt I'll ever run out of content.

Ahtman, is this thread based on some (credible) rumor you heard?

As for me, I'd like to see Wizards back away from the miniatures-n-mats boardgameyness of recent editions (no real difference between 3 and 4 on that score, except 4 does it better) and focus more on supporting roleplay. Not to beat a dead (and rotten) horse but video games already do that better and, if not, well ... boardgames are better boardgames than roleplaying games. As WotC has found out with Ravenloft.

To be clear, I'm not talking about D&D "getting back" to anything. It's always been miniatures-oriented considering it's pedigree. I would like to see WotC move towards roleplay-support rather than tactical-support as an entirely fresh direction for the line.

I'm happy with 4E. I don't think it's run long enough yet. I have 3 PHB, 2 DMG 3 MM, open grave, martial power 2 vault books and the fareun setting books. I think that's way more than I'll ever need.

I'd kind of like to see some focus on 'alternative rewards' and goals. By this, I mean that traditionally D&D has said "If you adventure, you will get treasure and XP as a reward."

In general, that's it. There may be some service-in-kind ("Adventurers, go rescue the king's daughter and we'll build that bridge you want built so you can get off the newb island.") but in general, loot, XP, and a feeling of satisfaction are the incentives along the hero's path. Some GMs mess with this, of course, but in general, that's it.

I'd like to see some other goals made more 'core.' A neat idea that some 4th books recommended was that players should be encouraged to suggest the kind of loot they'd want. (so players won't find a bunch of +3 Glaive-Guisarmes when they're all spear fighters. This removes the meta-gamey-bit that Longsword has the advantage that you're much more likely to find a magic one lying around...)

GMs are not entitled to fulfill these requests, but the idea makes things better for everyone. Continue and promote this idea: Standard modules should describe treasure in a generic fashion for GMs to tweak to fit their group.

More detailed would be to look at and develop non-loot reward ideas. A simple one would be Prestige Classes. An idea 3rd kind of suggested early on then abandoned would be to say that Prestige Classes (or Paragon paths, etc.) are intended as a quest reward: Do a favor for the Knights of Spiffy Armor, you get access to the KoSA Knight prestige, the KoSA Cleric prestige, etc.

Additionally maybe reinstate a limited form of the 2nd edition 'non-fighting XP reward system.' These rules gave out XP for various things besides combat. Get treasure, get XP. More interesting, each class had appropriate rewards for doing their classes "thing."

for a possible 5th, it would be neat to see this returned. Wizards get XP for finding spells, scrolls, etc. Thieves for going places others haven't. Etc.

Maybe make a list almost like feats in reverse, with prerequisites, that each character must choose a number from. So my Fighter "Explorer" character might take a Reward Focus that rewards him with bonus XP for taking on large monsters, exploring, and recovering knowledge. My friend's Fighter "Duelist" might have Reward Focuses that focus on Single Combat, building Fame/Recognition (fighting in public?), etc.

Maybe just do this as an aspect of feats or other character traits, so the Reward Focuses also provide bonuses to related activities?

Isn't there already a non-fighting XP mechanic in 4E? I remember thinking it was a great idea in theory and having trouble using it in a game. They're like serial skill tests or something.

There are 2 non-combat XP sources in 4E:

1. Quests. Major and minor quests reward XP when completed.

2. Skill challenges. Although the system for skill challenges was a bit wonky, it allowed for non-combat encounters to grant rewards comparable to a combat encounter. The idea was fantastic, and with a bit of tweaking the system itself wasn't bad either. I believe there were several articles in Dragon that tweaked the rules a bit, or at least explained in greater detail how to effectively use skill challenges.


As an example, a particular favorite from one of their published games was trying to influence some King. There were various groups trying to get their way, and the PC skill challenge basically allowed the PCs to convince the king without simply killing off the competition.

Manchu wrote:Isn't there already a non-fighting XP mechanic in 4E? I remember thinking it was a great idea in theory and having trouble using it in a game. They're like serial skill tests or something.

"Skill Tests" have been errated several times and I'm still unhappy with them as a player. From what I've seen, they're basically stated as "You can roll skills X, Y, or Z at various DCs and need to get a certain number of successes before failures, or bad stuff happens."

No real room for creativity or even tactics... Just find out the skill the party is best at and spam it.

A few are more complex, I think, but not by much.

I'd prefer if the system encouraged creativity... maybe say that the roll will be at no bonus if the player just says "I Roll History!", small bonus for "I know history, I'll think back to see if I remember any lessons from decades ago.", bsest bonus for "I remember back in ought-four, when we all wore onions on our belts. That was the style you see..."

And like most 'mystery' plot-scenes, failing needs to be a penalty, but not an end. The adventure should never be able to get stuck at a halting state barring total party kills. Failing a Skill Challenge should lead to a different and more difficult route, or the Boss gets more allies as he has time to call them in/build them/whatever.

Basically a lot of what you describe comes down to the GM; ours basically does what you are wanting. For modules I understand the need to have some options already available (the X, Y, and Z) but a good DM will leave room for improvisation and spontaneity. Most of my GM's are pretty good about allowing other options if you can find a creative use and explanation.

I am still bitter that Streetwise, by the book, really only has one use, and that is to spend one hour gathering information. Had a long debate with a DM about how it should let me determine the value of an item in a city but he was like "the book doesn't say you can". It just makes sense (plus gets a little more mileage out of the skill) that someone that grew up in a city and was keyed into it's underground organizations would have an idea what fences or pawnbrokers might pay for an item. Nope, only Arcana can tell you what it is worth. Grumblegrumble. Now I have to go sit in my rant corner again for a minute.

Oh, and while I am here. I would like to see less dependancy on magic items. So many builds in 4E are made based on getting certain items to make them work. I want to find phat loots (lutes? ed.- Only for bards), but I don't want it to be at the expense of character creation.

Magic Items, and the churn therof, is unfortunatley something of a D&D trop by this point that I doubt anyone would want to mess with. (Although, I've heard rumors Monte Cook is involved as a consultant for WotC at the moment, and I think he's written some replacement rules to remove the need for magic item pluses to make the difficulty curve math work.

I do like removing the 'churn' for magic items, though. To me, the "This sword is my destiny/this sword was my father's/this bow was enchanted to defeat X" is much more interesting than the D&D standard of "Oh, a +3 sword! OK, let me hock this crappy +2 I got from the Tomb of the Undead Clowns."

There were some neat rules options for 3.0 to avoid this in an expansion or two... an Ancestral Weapon that could be pumped with XP.... But then the character is low on XP, which was a weird 'economy' issue in 3.0. (Mainly for magic-item creation.)

I greatly prefer magic items with interesting effects. Even the 3.0 system where you had 'plus equivalents' so a +3 weapon might cost the same as a +2 Flaming weapon, or a +1 Teleporting weapon or similar.

The only problem with this is you can end up with a GM who wants to annoy players... "You have a Frostblade? have fun fighting nothing but ice creatures for the next adventure, sucker!" ...Which encourages the 'Sword Caddy" concept as the Well Equipped Party will carry weapons of every type they reasonably expect to need.

Then again, back in the day I loved Deadlands' Relic rules, wherein most magic items had a bad side ranging from "Cursed, you are at a penalty to a bunch of skills when in posession of this artifact" to "You got Wild Bill's Shootin' irons. By the way, he's not quite dead, and he wants them back."

Cheesecat wrote:I hope they bring back the 3e edition alignment system I want my Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral back! It would be cool if there was a hero or paragon class that was themed around damage reduction as well.

What is the point of going back to the old alignement style? You can cover all of these alignments in the new system without a problem. Evil easily covers Lawful and Neutral Evil and good easily covers Neutral and chaotic good. Unaligned covers all of the neutral alignments just fine. The key is that now you don't have to try and explain 9 different alignments to a new player and have it make sense. You can completely act chaotic neutral with your unaligned character. Does your character sheet *have* to say Lawful evil instead of evil to play the character that way? No it doesn't.

I think they confused the issue a little when they kept lawful good and chaotic evil. I think the spread should have been: Uber Goody Two-shoes, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Total Insane raving evil bastard. Would have been a lot clearer that way.

Skriker


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Balance wrote:Resurrection is another tricky spell. I think 4.0's version is both a bit more common and a bit more limited... 'Murder' becomes a bit less meaningful if it can be fixed with a suitable expenditure. Makes it more of an inconvenience.

Ressurection and raise dead have always been a bit of a prickly subject in all of the editions. On the one hand you don't want to make them so hard to come by that they may was well not exist, but by the same token you don't want them so readily available that death is meaningless.

I usually take a roleplaying angle on this one. A deity will not grant his priest the power for resurrection on anyone in his church without really good reason. A deity will never grant a resurrection to anyone outside of the faith without some extremely extenuating circumstances. Why would a priest waste his strongest powers on those who don't even support his faith? Raising is not quite extreme because the power level isn't as high or as potent. Good church members can expect a raise with the right donation. Those not in the church will likely be told that a quest will be required in addition to the right donation for a raise. Again, why should a church give out such serious magic just because someone asks?

I make exceptions for faiths following Gods of healing. They will not turn anyone away nor place undue burden on those they heal, except for those who are evil and were committing evil acts.

Also in my games those who perform this amazing healing powers are not available every where. Smaller temples will be limited to casting the least healing magic and those who can resurrect their followers are likely to be found only in the largest and most important temples for the faith.

Those are merely hurt are usually always helped, but the power over life returned from death is at the whim of the deity.

Skriker


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Balance wrote:Additionally maybe reinstate a limited form of the 2nd edition 'non-fighting XP reward system.' These rules gave out XP for various things besides combat. Get treasure, get XP. More interesting, each class had appropriate rewards for doing their classes "thing."

This is how I handle things even in 4th edition. I dislike the concept of the non-combat encounter in 4th edition because it still only comes down to rolling dice. I prefer to roleplay those moments out and reward the players with successful roleplaying of the scenario. They don't have to "win", but they need to stay in character to complete the encounter. Even if the obnoxious character blows the whole deal the group still gets rewarded well if they all stayed in character to deal with the situation.

Heck when I run my Shadworun campaign we can go for a month and half of sessions pure roleplaying with the players not needing to touch any dice at all. Kind of hard for characters to advance if they don't get any credit and experience for doing so.

I do agree with your statement that it is combat and XP that is the focus, especially now in 4th edition. It plays too much like a video game that way for my tastes. Kill lots of stuff to get better stats and better weapons so that you can kill more stuff to get better stats and better weapons so that you can kill more stuff...yadda yadda yadda...

Skriker

I don't use XP in D&D. So if the PCs bluff past a guard rather than kill him it's all the same. It stops the 'run my chunks of XP' syndrome.

Also re: streetwise - should be able to use it to get 'word on the street' find out who the movers and shakers are of the criminal world, find a fence, know how to get around without getting stabbed by the thieves guild etc.

The book is the players HANDBOOK not Players RULEBOOK and the DMG is the DM **GUIDE**

Primary rule is 'have fun!'

Balance wrote:Magic Items, and the churn therof, is unfortunatley something of a D&D trop by this point that I doubt anyone would want to mess with.

I have no problem with having magic items in general. My problem in 4E is that they are so tied into giving the character powers that you end up building characters around items and not items around characters. Finding a +2 dynamic short sword isn't good enough, you have to have a +2 vicious short sword, or the build doesn't quite work right. I want magic items, I just don't want them to dominate the game to such an extent as they do now. Also, to get rid of Ki Focus (or just make it Monk only instead of giving it to Assassins and Executioners) or completely rewrite the way they work becuase as it is now there is a lot of goofiness to them. They are everything and nothing and even the old character builder and the current subscription char builder don't calculate them properly often times.

Make the wizard's implement "Wand of Accuracy" useful like just change it to +1 to hit and give more options for dual-wielding or even just make it a +1 to attack or be able to attack twice per turn (for each

weapon) when dual-wielding.

Cheesecat wrote:Make the wizard's implement "Wand of Accuracy" useful like just change it to +1 to hit and give more options for dual-wielding or even just make it a +1 to attack or be able to attack twice per turn (for each

weapon) when dual-wielding.

The problem with that is that an Accurate Wand is a superior implement and does just what you say, but requires a feat to be able to wield. What wonderful wording, having a power, Wand of Accuracy, and an implement, Accurate Wand. I agree they need to do something to Wand of Accuracy to bring it up to par with Staff of Defense and Orb of Imposition, though I'm not sure what as stacking bonus's (expertise + superior + mastery) would seem to get pretty crazy. Maybe if it allowed you to reroll missed attacks from a spell once per encounter? Meaning if it were a Fireball you could reroll all attacks from the spell, unlike Elven Accuracy which is just one roll.

The only dual wielding implement thing I can think of is Dual Wield Mastery, which lets you add the damage bonus from both implements to the attack. If you have a Staff +3 and a Wand +3 you do +6 damage instead of +3 damage. Unless you are dual wielding Staves of Ruin +3 in which case the damage is +12.

Ahtman wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:Make the wizard's implement "Wand of Accuracy" useful like just change it to +1 to hit and give more options for dual-wielding or even just make it a +1 to attack or be able to attack twice per turn (for each

weapon) when dual-wielding.

The problem with that is that an Accurate Wand is a superior implement and does just what you say, but requires a feat to be able to wield. What wonderful wording, having a power, Wand of Accuracy, and an implement, Accurate Wand. I agree they need to do something to Wand of Accuracy to bring it up to par with Staff of Defense and Orb of Imposition, though I'm not sure what as stacking bonus's (expertise + superior + mastery) would seem to get pretty crazy. Maybe if it allowed you to reroll missed attacks from a spell once per encounter? Meaning if it were a Fireball you could reroll all attacks from the spell, unlike Elven Accuracy which is just one roll.

The only dual wielding implement thing I can think of is Dual Wield Mastery, which lets you add the damage bonus from both implements to the attack. If you have a Staff +3 and a Wand +3 you do +6 damage instead of +3 damage. Unless you are dual wielding Staves of Ruin +3 in which case the damage is +12.

I was mainly talking about dual-wielding weapons.

Cheesecat wrote:dual-wielding or even just make it a +1 to attack or be able to attack twice per turn

So give everyone the Ranger's Twin Strike At-Will? If you want dual benifits you have have to take a dual wield build, which quiet a few jobs have, and others have ways of obtaining. There are also quite a few feats for duel wielding. This isn't that different than 3/3.5 where you had to feat into or get class features to effectively use two weapons simultaneously.

Ahtman wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:dual-wielding or even just make it a +1 to attack or be able to attack twice per turn

So give everyone the Ranger's Twin Strike At-Will? If you want dual benifits you have have to take a dual wield build, which quiet a few jobs have, and others have ways of obtaining. There are also quite a few feats for duel wielding. This isn't that different than 3/3.5 where you had to feat into or get class features to effectively use two weapons simultaneously.

Just looked over the options available you're right, although I think there should be more options for dual-wielding rogues and warlords. Also I think crossbow should have a +3 prof bonus to compensate for

there lower damage and should count as military ranged.

i want to see them keep working on 4E. i have been rather enjoying it, to be honest. a new edition would be... annoying to say the least. i am still waiting for more setting books to come out (mainly, Dragonlance 4E, needs me my kender).

i do not think that 4E has played itself out yet. the system works... mmm.. better might not be the right word, perhaps "with more ease" than before. you have class varients instead of just mountains of feats (though still plenty customisation through feats). more time in 4E means more spells / powers, which means that much more customisation availible. i love "themes" and "backrounds" as more ways to tweak a character, at low levels, to be more in line with what you were looking for. in 3.5 i wanted a cleric / fighter, i made it, but it didn't work too well. in 4E i can build him as a straight cleric, and he can kick ass and take names (like i envisioned the character) while at the same time being just a Cleric (though i did multiclass into swordmage for the implement training).

yes, the game is simple. that is a good thing, as it allows (for the possibility) of deeper stories. all dependant on GM and players, 'natch.

Edit - Forgot to mention: i am glad 4E moved away from alignment being a major part of the system, like it was in 3/3.5. with alignment sidelined (but never forgotten) we can move past "lawful stupid" and all that nonsense, and get more into characters, personal codes of honor, and such. there is nothin saying you cannot play "chaotic Good" or "lawful evil" characters (or NPCs), it just means you don't get rail-roaded by alignment. i love how the paladin class in 4E is alignment neutral (as in, you can take "good" or "evil" powers mix and match if you want). it makes it more a "who is your character. he is a paladin. a paladin for/of who?"

Cthulhubeard wrote:i want to see them keep working on 4E. i have been rather enjoying it, to be honest. a new edition would be... annoying to say the least. i am still waiting for more setting books to come out (mainly, Dragonlance 4E, needs me my kender).

I think that's generally the hope of most people invested in a particular edition. So far, 4E has been accelerating the timeline set back in 3rd edition. 3rd came out in 2000, 3.5 in 2003... 4E in 2008, Essentials in 2010, with talk of 5E already starting. I can't help but think that the success of Pathfinder has a big hand in this. Even if 4E is living up to internal financial expectations (hard to tell as we only have retailer estimates of sales and no actual info on D&D insider subscription rates), I'm sure it's burning someone's goat over at WOTC that they can no longer claim #1 status in physical book sales for the first time since D&D came out.

Personally, I'm hoping that 5E plays a bit more like an RPG and less like a minis/CCG hybrid. I really liked the midstep between 3.5/4e that Star Wars Saga. While that system had its own problems (namely Jedi attacking with a severely front-loaded skill instead of base attack bonus), the general mechanics felt like good and addressed the same issues that Pathfinder fixed in 3.5 yet still added some 4E style mechanics to the mix.