D&D 4th Edition Released

[Faelor]

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been released today, June 6th.

Huzzah! Get your books and get your RP on!

I'm going on break in 2 hours to snag mine when the shop opens ;)

[Coolcanadian]

http://loadingreadyrun.com/videos/view/332/inside_dampd_4th_edition

is it like that by chance?

[Faelor]

* I included a Ranger abilitiy and a short story of a round of combat with Faelor. If you wanna read anything I would read that so you know how combat can be done.


I've never been impressed with table top mechanics completely, they always felt barren. Trying to have some realistic elements in how some mechanics are done, while some are completely magic (dur). It hasn't had a great mix in any system I've played in. It's too bland and not interactive enough, or every character is so rediculous because of how loose the mechanics are it's stupid.

With Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition I have yet to find any major complaint. I am mostly learning about the player side still while I skim some of the Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) and Monster Manual (MM), but it's been great. What I've read over in the DMG and MM has greatly impressed me also, and especially my friends whom have already gone over a majority of the two DM-based books.

Player interaction in combat is awesome, even at level one. As soon as you get another level or two (depending on the class) you'll start to get more reaction abilities, stuff you can do during another player or NPC's turn in response to something. A lot of it is like Magic: the Gathering actually, a lot of the same mechanics and wording. But don't be afraid former Magic players, this is the newer Magic where things are refined as hell. Everything is specific as to when it happens and how it happens.

There really is no more "DM Magic", besides what the adventure actually consists of. There is no more "the DM controls the game" type BS, where they do all the rolling and decide just about everything. The game is about player freedom, with the DM "guiding" the show along. The DMG suggests some things that should be assumed, but also has some amazing ideas on how to handle specific scenarios. The same goes for how monsters act in the MM. There are specific or variations of monsters that should only be used in specific situations, and it tells you that. That is because they give certain abilities to those monsters (or you can add them yourself, changing how NPCs work is super easy) like they do to players. I'll get to this in a second.

For those that are familar with "Action Points" in recent editions, they have returned. Sorta. Each player gets 1 whole Action Point for the day, but this can be earned back from the DM. The game suggests after two encounters (the term encounter is very specific, for example you're in the same "encounter" if it isn't possible to have a 5 minute break. If there is no 5 minute break, encounter abilities are not regenerated) a party should earn their Action Point back given the encounters were high enough difficulty and not trival. You can spend that Action Point to get one additional minor, move or standard action that turn. Pretty awesome honestly. Need to be able to save someone in the party, or kill a certain baddie before a timer runs out? You can do it if you have kept your point.

Now, what "abilities" was I talking about monsters can use? Well, one is an action point. That's right, monsters have the abilities to also crank up some power. During the first 4th Edition run I did with my friends, an Ogre used his Healing Surge (an ability you only have X of per day, and you can use it once an encounter to heal yourself for 1/4 your max HP) and then decided to spend his AP for another standard action and use a cleave type ability on two party mates, dealing massive damage to the two "tanks" in our party. That plus a small movement he did to get in that position were all done in one turn.

Combat is also very mobile, which pretty much requires players and a DM to invest in a play mat and minitures. Some classes are extremely mobile, or can "spec" to be mobile if they want to be. As one could bet some decent money, my first character in 4th Ed was an Elven Ranger. One of the handful of abilities I had at level one was Evasive Strike (full detail box below), which is an Encounter Exploit. The Encounter part of the ability type means I can use it once an encounter (and regain the ability after a brief 5 minute break after combat before another one begins), and exploit refers to the fact that the ability is of the Martial Power Source which the Ranger has. Note a lot of the Ranger abilities can be used with melee or ranged weapons, but there are a lot of ranged/melee specific abilities too. It's about half and half.



Evasive Strike - Ranger Attack 1
Encounter * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action - Melee or Ranged Weapon
Target: One Creature
Special: You can shift a number of squares equal to 1 + your Wisdom modifier either before or after the attack.
Attack: Strength vs. AC (melee) or Dexterity vs. AC (ranged)
Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier damage (melee) or 2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage (ranged).


The Following Paragraph Is One Round In Combat With Faelor, the Level One Forest Stalker
Anyways, there was a goblin running away from the encounter trying to warn his comrades at a nearby camp that we were kicking arse and taking names. He was on the opposite side of the field by the time his turn was done, and he went through a lot of difficult terrain (1/2 movement), but given he is a Goblin and had some escape abilities (again, certain NPCs are great for certain jobs, this guy was a scoutish character by default), so he had no problem. As a clever little Goblin he also broke LOS so I was unable to get a real grasp of where he was nor could I take a shot, just the general direction. Thankfully I am Faelor, the Elven Ranger and have quite a few tricks up my sleeve. I used my Movement Action to move 7 spaces (7 for Elves, 5 for Dwarves and 6 for everyone else), used my Minor Action to activate Hunter's Quarry (an ability that allows me to deal extra damage to the closet opponent) on the fleeing Goblin, and then I used my standard action (note I used all 3/3 actions/phases possible in a round; Minor, Movement and Standard) to use Evasive Strike. Evasive Strike allows me to shift (a type of movement that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity) 1+Wisdom Modifier number of squares. Well, unlike my actual self Faelor is very wise and managed to move 5 squares thanks to an 18 Wisdom (+4 mod). The terrain was difficult so I should have been only to move 2 (half movement, round down). But as an Elf I have a racial that states difficult terrain does not block any of my movement while shifting. BAM. The goblin was in my site. I managed to run through aprox 60 feet of thick forest in a few brief seconds and began to set up my shot. I rolled, everyone in the party waiting for the result. When the d20 stopped rolling, it was on a 2. I would surely miss, BUT, I'm Faelor, the Elven Forest Stalker. I used my Elven racial that I can do once an encounter; Elven Accuracy! That's right, I am given one free d20 attack reroll in an encounter. So I rolled another D20, and huzzah a natural 20, which is a critical hit automatically in 4th Edition. Critical hits are now "max damage" with an attack. As seen below, I get double weapon damage (2d10, as a long bow is 1d10) plus my dex mod (4). Well, on the crit it's max damage so that is 24 damage. But wait, let's not forget my Hunter's Quarry. That also is maximized on a d6, so 6 more damage adding up to 30 damage after running an incredible distance. Sure, I had to use two out of two my encounter powers but I was able to get the job done assigned to my class. A Ranger is a striker, a class that deals high damage to one specific target while staying mobile. That round was the definition of my archetype. We prevented the additional Goblins from attacking in that encounter, and we ambushed them a short while after taking a Short Rest (5 minute break to regain encounter powers).

That was pretty lengthy, but the actual turn took about a minute out of game time. In game time that was a round, which is 6 seconds. I love how fast combat is in the game. The abilities are very straight forward, even the higher level spells. There is no 5 paragraphs of text for Wall of Fire anymore, none of that crazy stuff. Things are straight and to the point.

Anyways, I could write a lot more but I don't really even no what else to include. So I'll leave the post as is.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is full of win. Wizards of the Coast did an amazing job, and I can only pray that every additional book they release is at this quality level unlike the horde of books they released for all previous editions that just lowered the game's overall quality. There were some good books, but most of them sucked.

[Raspbuten]

I actually read all of that.

It would seem there is one broken mechanic, and this is the idea of "natural 20 = max damage". It's very similar to the Vanguard melee bug.

You got max damage on your bow AND you got the max damage bonus applied to any extra damage being done in a turn? That's kind of BS. It really does turn the ranger into a 1 hit wonder, which I would tend to agree is the purpose of the class. But one death shot could lead to extra hard encounters, just so that 1 shot moves like this are balanced.

Had you had a similar ability to add damage on top of Hunter's Quarry (instead of your movement burst) that for example added another 1d6 damage, your natural 20 would have turned into 6 (max from Hunters Quarry) + 6 (max damage from the other damage ability) + 10 (longbow) an effective 120% increase in damage, incurring a 5 minute encounter cool down. Granted, you got the lucky roll, but still. A lucky roll applied each time isn't lucky, it's broken.

Makes the 2d4 (I think?) thief backstab from 1st edition look pretty measly.

Oh and for the record, I don't play D&D (anymore)

[Faelor]

Just for the record it is insanely difficult if not impossible to one-shot a lot of things in 4th ed. The goblin running away was already damaged from the Warlock in the party (actually the goblin was the target of Eyebite (?) and couldn't see the Warlock as a side effect).

I blew all my encounter abilities to get to the guy and finish him off. As for the maximized D6, that is what I was told by the DM but now that I think about it I need to verify that. I can see that being a problem at higher levels, especially for Backstab as it will be a bundle of D6. Then again the Hunter's Quarry and Backstab can only be applied to one attack during each round. So if I shot multiple times in a round against my quarry, I can only apply the bonus to one attack. Same goes for an onslaught of attacks from a Rogue with Backstab going off, can only go off once.

As for d20=max damage, it's a huge niec change from the broken crit mechanics of 3.0 and 3.5. Getting a huge crit range with a big crit mod weapon was just stupid. Fear the Keen Scythe with the Improved Critical feat, and some other class bonuses... You can roll 17-20 on a d20 and get 5x damage. 5x damage? Talk about spikes. There were instances were I would "double crit" on my bow, doing 4x damage which was just rediculous in 3.0/3.5 with a bow due to how broken Archers were with damage modifiers. Don't even get me started about weapons that could crit from 12-20 *shudder*.

3.5 Crit with a Longbow, 18 dex: 3d8+4 damage
4th ed Crit with a long bow, 18 dex: 14 damage

Ugh and that is without any modifiers or stupid mechanics of extending crit range or whatever. Anyways... 5% chance to do max damage is a welcome change in my eyes.

I'm gonna go search some boards and see if I can verify the maximized modifer damage such as quarry and backstab. Good call.

[Kontraband]

Just for the record it is insanely difficult if not impossible to one-shot a lot of things in 4th ed. The goblin running away was already damaged from the Warlock in the party (actually the goblin was the target of Eyebite (?) and couldn't see the Warlock as a side effect).

I blew all my encounter abilities to get to the guy and finish him off. As for the maximized D6, that is what I was told by the DM but now that I think about it I need to verify that. I can see that being a problem at higher levels, especially for Backstab as it will be a bundle of D6. Then again the Hunter's Quarry and Backstab can only be applied to one attack during each round. So if I shot multiple times in a round against my quarry, I can only apply the bonus to one attack. Same goes for an onslaught of attacks from a Rogue with Backstab going off, can only go off once.

As for d20=max damage, it's a huge niec change from the broken crit mechanics of 3.0 and 3.5. Getting a huge crit range with a big crit mod weapon was just stupid. Fear the Keen Scythe with the Improved Critical feat, and some other class bonuses... You can roll 17-20 on a d20 and get 5x damage. 5x damage? Talk about spikes. There were instances were I would "double crit" on my bow, doing 4x damage which was just rediculous in 3.0/3.5 with a bow due to how broken Archers were with damage modifiers. Don't even get me started about weapons that could crit from 12-20 *shudder*.

3.5 Crit with a Longbow, 18 dex: 3d8+4 damage
4th ed Crit with a long bow, 18 dex: 14 damage

Ugh and that is without any modifiers or stupid mechanics of extending crit range or whatever. Anyways... 5% chance to do max damage is a welcome change in my eyes.

I'm gonna go search some boards and see if I can verify the maximized modifer damage such as quarry and backstab. Good call.


Holy confusiontron batman!