LibriumArcana.Games

Well, I'm posting live from GenCon Indianapolis, where the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons was announced on Thursday night. The announcement was a load of hype with almost no substance, but Wizards of the Coast has scattered people throughout the convention who can talk about it, and apparently each one of them has a secret that they're allowed to tell; you have to find all of them to get everything that the public is allowed to know. I'll work on that tomorrow.

So far I've learned that the base class progressions have been expanded to 30 levels, that they're developing tools for playing online, that a lot of rules have been streamlined and/or cut (they yakked on for ten minutes about how horrible 3e grappling rules are), that the conversion process from 3.x is so difficult that the RPGA is simply ending the Living Greyhawk campaign rather than continuing it, and that evidently they're introducing evil paladins (BOOOO!)

I've gotten conflicting reports about whether or not the Open Gaming License will apply to the new edition, but the most reliable source I've talked to so far says it will.

I'll post more as I find out more at the convention.

hmmm... I have watched all the reports and youtube videos put out by wizards. And my feelings are mixed. I basically have to reserve judgment until I see the product, which means I either have to wait a year, or become a playtester... which I am attempting

Nit Goes Dumpster Diving, or, What We Know So Far.

Most is hype, unfortunately. Part of that is because, let's face it, it's a company, and it's a product. There's also the fact the guys talking most about it off the official records are the guys who made it; they love it cause it's their baby.

SRD: Still going to be free. Will be updated.

Alignment: Heavy retooling, no longer effects mechanically. Can I say thank fucking god? The alignment system had insufficient Grey Areas for that. No word on what, precisely, these means for Paladins.. Save that there's lots of rumours about their evil counterparts finally emerging from the obscure pages of optional rules and into the prime time.

HP: Getting 'retooled' so PC's don't go down in one hit at either high or low levels. No more else availiable. If this means 1st level adventurers can now have some asskicking fests, I'd be happy.

Fighters: Talk of 'maneuvers' and, at high levels, superhuman(Or elven, or dwarven) acts. Sounds like Tome Of Battle's basic idea is getting kept. Again, thank god.

Spellcasting: Overhaul! Top to bottom, from the sound of it. Every class will apparently have at-will, per-encounter, and per-day powers. I like this alot; more flexibility and the fact the wizards don't have to be misers with their exploding doom at low levels. Also, losing the old 9-levels style. Described as 'Semi-Vancian', but I don't know what vancian means.

Forgotten Realms: Taking centre stage from all reports. Poor Greyhawk.

Eberron: Most likely back for more. Don't expect huge plot changes.

Levels: Retooled and expanded. One official bloke made the comment 1-10 'Heroic', 11-20 'Paragon', 21-30 'Epic'. All I ask is that it means I can throw heavy shit at 1st level characters.

Races: No word on whose back aside from the obvious, but lots of talk of making it mean more to be a race; let's face it, by 20th level, is there much different mechanically between a Dwarf and a Human fighter, excluding PrC's?

SirNitram wrote:Spellcasting: Overhaul! Top to bottom, from the sound of it. Every class will apparently have at-will, per-encounter, and per-day powers. I like this alot; more flexibility and the fact the wizards don't have to be misers with their exploding doom at low levels. Also, losing the old 9-levels style. Described as 'Semi-Vancian', but I don't know what vancian means.

The Vancian system of magic is the standard magical system used in D&D up until Advanced d20's dynamic spellcasting system came about. Basically it's the system where your wizard/mage/spellthrower of whatever flavor memorizes and prepares their spells instead of dynamically using any spell they know at will but making a save vs drain check.

The Vancian system is named after the magic system of Jack Vance's Dying Earth series which was used as the basis for the magic system of D&D and many other RPGs. Hell, one of the magic gods of D&D was named after an anagram of Vance's name - Vecna.

I would think (and probably incorrectly) that a 'Semi-Vancian' system would switch over certain spells to dynamic after a certain level and give the non-mage classes their 'at-will' powers without having your fighter have to memorize how to preform his Enhanced Battle Charge ability every day. By the switch over I mean that lower level spells would no longer have to be memorized once a casting-class reaches a certain level. Because lets face it, if you're capable of understanding the complex magical rotes and requirements to open gates for planar travel, temporal manipulation or self-deifacation are you really going to need to memorize the five word spell for prismatic spray? "Well, yes I am a near demi-god of magic capable of obliterating cities with a flick of the wrist and a slip of the tongue. No, I cannot cast Prismatic spray. Yes, I know that's a low level introductory useless spell that a wizard of my skill should be able to pull off blindfolded, gagged, bound, tortured and half-dead. But I didn't memorize it today so I can't cast it..."

The Star Wars Saga edition is in a lot of ways a test run. I'll give the run down on what it does in the relevant areas.

1st level: A Talent (class special ability chosen from a list (some talents are part of talent trees) and triple maximum hitdie (Con only once though). So a high Con isn't mandatory for decent low level hp. Smallest die in SW was a d6, so minimum 18 hp.

Talents: class abilities gained every odd level

Bonus feats every even level for basic classes.

Alignment: None. Hell Black Company D20 and Arcana Evolved dropped it without missing a beat.

Spells (Force Abilities): bought using feats (1+ Wisdom bonus in SW). Each usable once per encounter. Refreshable by using a Force point or by certain talents under the right conditions (one Talent refreshes all telekinetic powers if you roll a natural 20 when using one). Can buy powers multiple times for multiple uses. Palpatine has Force Lightning bought three or four times.

Vancian is as B4UTRUST described. Gygax was and is a Vance fan. 1st edition Thief was based in part on Cugel the Clever, The Robe of Eyes from Chun the Unavoidable, and IOUN stones were used with Vance's permission. A skilled magician could hold a half dozen spells in his brain at one time, including such spells as The Excellent Prismatic Spray and the Spell of Forlorn Encystment (Imprisonment). One arch-magician is notable for deploying nine spells against a sea demon.

Check out The Land of the Falling Wall for a Dying Earth story complete with Vancian magic.

SirNitram wrote:Alignment: Heavy retooling, no longer effects mechanically. Can I say thank fucking god? The alignment system had insufficient Grey Areas for that. No word on what, precisely, these means for Paladins.. Save that there's lots of rumours about their evil counterparts finally emerging from the obscure pages of optional rules and into the prime time.

Well, I'll tell you one thing. The secret that one of the 4e Q&A people at GenCon had was, to quote verbatim, "hellish paladins of Asmodeus." This does not make me happy.

Well haven't Paladins been turned into Warriors touched by the hellish or divine as is? I mean, with all the variants running around, I would have thought so.

I mean, hell, anti-paladins were all but a class in themselves with the freaking Blackguard.

For the record, I'm all for broadening the classes to the point where prestige classes aren't even needed to differentiate someone specialized in one path from another.

I mean, hell, anti-paladins were all but a class in themselves with the freaking Blackguard.

No they weren't. The Blackguard was more of a Fallen Paladin class then a evil from the beginning class. Note how most of it was geared towards ex-Paladins? Even to the point where you could trade Paladin levels for Blackguard ones?


As for evil paladins... Evil should have some sort of champions. History and myth is filled with examples of Black Knights and so on but they should not be carbon copies or exalt mirror imagines of Paladins. Good and Evil do not work that way.

The blackguard worked just fine even without Paladin levels, it just got more buff with those extra paladin levels. Really though it's more like it replaced the otherwise wasted paladin levels.

Frankly, like I said, I'd be much happier if the classes were broadened so that you would start off as a basic fighter with a mix of feats or whatnot to determine what style you were. I mean honestly you could Barbarian, Paladin, Fighter, and Monk under the same umbrella with a more inclusive system.

Now then, how to make a proper anti-paladin, or Soulrender, or whatever you want to call it. Where is the line drawn between unique class and evil paladin? Should they get smite good, detect good, command undead, etc?

Do they get demonic mounts? Should they get the power to distory reality, etc.?

I agree with Frigid. Attempting to make an evil champion as a mirror of the paladin is just silly; the motives and means of good and evil are too different to use the same sort of instrument. We'll just have to see what they do with it, though.

Rogue 9 wrote:I agree with Frigid. Attempting to make an evil champion as a mirror of the paladin is just silly; the motives and means of good and evil are too different to use the same sort of instrument. We'll just have to see what they do with it, though.

Bull. The dark knight is an iconic mythic figure. The powers of a anti-paladin should be different than a paladin rather than a simple reversal, but they would be about equally powerful (because the martial abilities and skill set would be about the same). Arcana Evolved did it well with their Champion class, which had some abilities and capabilities in common and others varying according to what cause they served.

It depends so very much on what role a Champion Of Evil fills. If he's a lone badass, yes, his skills should be wildly different.. But alot of the Paladin's ones make sense for an elite unholy warrior leading the faithful to war. Evil can cure wounds too.

SirNitram wrote:It depends so very much on what role a Champion Of Evil fills. If he's a lone badass, yes, his skills should be wildly different.. But alot of the Paladin's ones make sense for an elite unholy warrior leading the faithful to war. Evil can cure wounds too.

There's an old Dragon magazine article (1st edition old) which had paladin variants for every other alignment. They were kickass. The lawful evil was a dark knight, the chaotic neutral was more of ranger/rogue type, the chaotic evil more of a berserker and so on a so forth.

Dragon #312 has that for 3.5. And it isn't bull; I never said there shouldn't be dark knights, but their power set should not be the paladin's or a mirror thereof. I've said it before and I'll say it again; contagion x/week is a crappy ability for a dark knight, and lay on hands (or a damaging mirror) isn't much better.

I was going to say that I like the blackguard base class that OneWinged4ngel has been cooking up on the WotC forums, but went over there just now to fetch the link only to discover that he's pulled all his material from there after finding out about the fact that their terms of use permit them to steal and publish without credit any and all work posted to their board. *Shrug*

Okay Rogue, I misunderstood what you were posting. We all seem to be on the same page.

WotC is fucking retarded. I now need to go to their headquarters and beat their design team over its collective head with mythology texts. Seriously, the erinyes and succubus were redundant, so they're eliminating the erinyes and making succubi into devils to be more in line with their new "devils are human-like and demons are bestial" idea? That's wrong in so many ways it gives me a headache.

The stupid burns. I liked the "angels corrupted by war" bit they had for the origins of the devils in the Fiendish Codex II, but this is taking things way too far in other directions.

Too many iconic demons are humanoid to a greater or lesser degree and since so many of them are made from humanoid souls, this makes sense. Is Grazz't going to turn into a devil now?

There is, of course, a way to discourage this. Stop shelling out cash for stupid shit.

Cynical Cat wrote:The stupid burns. I liked the "angels corrupted by war" bit they had for the origins of the devils in the Fiendish Codex II, but this is taking things way too far in other directions.

Too many iconic demons are humanoid to a greater or lesser degree and since so many of them are made from humanoid souls, this makes sense. Is Grazz't going to turn into a devil now?

There is, of course, a way to discourage this. Stop shelling out cash for stupid shit.

I did that shortly after 3.0 was released.

Thing is, there are pretty much three companies left making new products these days that stores will reliably stock. WotC, Steve Jackson Games, and White Wolf. Everything else is failing or converting to d20. Of course, RPGs are really a failing market as is. With the advent of computers and loads of computer aids for GMs, anyone with a cheap PC can whip up a gaming world, take a ruleset they like, and go to town. Of course, WoW and other MMOs do take a pretty big bite out of the potential gaming market.

I'll stop now before I get on another bender on the subject though.

Oh, I fully intend to not buy 4e unless there's really some improvement. I'll give its SRD a look before I'll touch the books.

But an edition change should be about improving the ruleset. So far from their articles, it looks like most of what they're doing is massive flavor changes. That's what campaign settings are for; you don't have to do that shit when revising the core rules.

Massive spoilers for the changes to the Forgotten Realms for 4e.

Rogue 9 wrote:

The simple answer, in a roundabout way: $$$

It forces new materials to be created be it novelizations, scenerios, supplements, manuals, books, etc. This generates profit. That generates large(in geek terms, probably around 3-4") hard-ons for the 'designers' and results in more changes. This furthers the circle of suck. And in a year and a half we'll see another round of revamps and changes with Faerun/Forgotten Realms/every other established series and they'll slap 4.5 on it and call it good till they come out with 5e.

So yes, the simple answer for the stupidity: Profit. If that made sense to anyone but me in my sleep-adled, semi-inebriated state.

Hey, I've been saying for a while now that it's a rough market. Anything they can do to make it profitable, they'll do. It's not like the thousands of GMs with word processors, excel, and graph paper are making their jobs any easier.

I am so not amused.

Edit: I don't mind changes. Change happens and is necessary to keep a campaign setting going. Keeping a campaign setting static and unchanging kills it. At the same time this change stinks to high heaven of X Men Decimation style, which was fueled by "Hur, to many mutants! Let's get rid of them!"

Greyhawk is sitting right there if they want a setting with fewer mages and gods.

Indeed... The Ben is Not Amused. Especially just getting rid of all the gods of magic. What the fuck?