D&D 4th Edition

[Ragorn]

Impressions, from those who are following the game and/or have played the teaser adventure?

I like it, I think. It's too early to tell, the starter characters show some interesting potential, but I need to see the character creation engine before I make a judgement. As with all pre-gen characters, the given skills and feats are very basic and are unoptimized. I'm playing the Dragonborn Paladin in the pre-gen adventure, and I can already tell that some of the skills they've given this character are redundant and/or frilly.

They've really simplified and streamlined the game engine. Every class has abilities that can be used at will, abilities that can be used once per fight, and abilities that can be used once per day. For example, my Paladin has an at-will attack that increases his chance to hit for every enemy adjacent to him. He has an encounter attack that does roughly double damage. And he has a daily attack that does triple damage and allows a nearby ally to heal himself at the same time.

Spells work the same way... there's no memorizing, and there are no spell slots. The Wizard can cast Magic Missile at will, Burning Hands once per fight, and Sleep once per day. That's just how it works.

Many of the skills have been consolidated. There's a Stealth skill and a Thievery skill, and these encompass the half-dozen skills that dungeon Rogues used to have to keep track of. There's Athletics, which replaces swim/jump/climb. There's Perception, which replaces spot/listen. I think the skill system was a huge failing in 3.5, because they failed to give most of the skills enough utility to justify their existence. 4.0 looks to take some of the focus away from skill selection.

I'm not sure I like the healing. Basically, every character has the ability to heal himself a certain number of times per day, called Healing Surges. Using a Healing Surge is an encounter power, which means you can only use it once per fight. The Cleric and the Paladin have abilities which let them trigger Healing Surges in their teammates beyond the once-per-fight limitation. And that's it, so far. Like I said, I'm not sure I like it. I'll have to see the full game.

Finally, there are new monster types. Minions are just that, annoyances. They have 1 hit point, so any successful attack will kill them. But there are a LOT of minions in most fights... a dozen or more. Minions do standardized damage (no dice rolling), so their turns move very quickly. What this means is that anyone with an AOE attack (the Wizard and the Paladin both have one in the starter adventure) can cut down a swath of minions all at once... but if you don't do so, their damage can stack up really fast. There are other monster types, but they're more abstract... Artillery monsters are long-range attackers, Skirmishers are intended to be roguelike attackers, etc. Yes, there are elite monsters. Yes, they do exactly what you think they do.

Anyone else played the teaser?

[Shevarash]

I like the fact that they spent some time on the skill system, but I'm really not sure about replacing feats, class abilities, and spells with the recharge-timer powers. It sounds like it would vastly dumb down the whole game. Of course, I haven't played it or even read the preview books ($20 for marketing materials? what?), so that's just a gut initial reaction.

[Ragorn]

Feats still exist. The pre-gen characters have pre-selected feats, and they seem to be in line with 3e's feat system (the Fighter has Power Attack, the Paladin has Extend Breath Weapon, etc). Yeah, I don't know about replacing Vancian spellcasting completely, but we'll see how it turns out.

The MMO elements are very strong, though. I'll cut straight to the chase and tell you that D&D has tanks now. Fighters and Paladins can "mark" targets, which is basically like a taunt. If my Paladin marks a target, then any time that target makes an attack that doesn't target me, he takes 6 damage. The pre-gen Paladin's 2nd level skill is an encounter power that World of Warcraft calls "Intervene." If I'm standing next to an ally who gets attacked, I can interpose myself and take the hit. It's like a one-round rescue.

Also, every creature has unlimited AOOs now, though you can only AOO each target once per round (think unlimited Combat Reflexes). So you put that Paladin up front, and ANY creature who tries to walk past him takes an AOO, not just the first guy.

[Shevarash]

Well, I think I like the unlimited AOOs, I always thought the limit was a bit strange to begin with. Tanking and Taunting, while familiar elements to me still just seem a bit wrong for D&D. Those mechanics exist in MMOs because it's difficult to get the same fine control on our monitors that we can get organically with miniatures. In other words, why bother with a special mechanic for tanking when you can do it naturally by maintaining a formation and moving the front-line fighters to take the brunt of the attacks? When you get right down to it, MMO "strategy" is a pale imitation of D&D tabletop tactics, with many concessions made for the medium, and now it seems like they're going backwards.

I can't deny that is sounds interesting, though the majority of my interest is in how it applies to the MUD. The MUD has more in common with MMOs than tabletop, so there could be a lot of useful ideas to harvest here...

[Ragorn]

I wrote an article once about how "threat" in MMOs is an artificial expression of a very real concept. It makes perfect sense for a monster to want to eliminate the target it perceives to be the biggest threat. My problem with taunting is that it's completely synthetic... the tank is usually the lowest-damaging (and highest defense) person on the field, but he hits a button and the computer-controlled monster says "Oh! I want to attack THIS guy!" Realistically speaking, the monster has no reason to try to bite the tin can in front of him when the squishy Mage at the back is the one doing all the damage. But MMOs are designed with taunting in mind, and the game dev community just never found a better solution.

Target marking isn't much better. It makes the target attack you for reasons that are purely fabricated. In the case of the Paladin, the marked target attacks you not because you're the biggest threat, or because you're the easiest to kill (probably just the opposite, in both cases). It attacks you because it knows it will take damage if it doesn't. So target marking feels very forced to me.

Attacks of opportunity are a perfectly servicable solution to the problem. Yes, you can walk past the Fighter to go for the Bard, but you're going to get punished for it. The problem in 4th edition is that the Opportunity Attacks themselves are not very threatening. AOOs are performed with "basic attacks," which are just weapon swings without any of your fancy class skills. So by level 20, a Paladin might have an at-will combat skill that lets him deal triple weapon damage while knocking the target prone... but his AOO will still be a standard 1d8+5 longsword attack. So AOOs by themselves, as implemented in 4e, aren't enough to enforce battlefield tactics (I don't think... obviously, we haven't seen all the rules).

I hated taunts in 3.5 (Goad and other skills). I banned them outright. This is D&D, not the WOWRPG :)

[Yayaril]

8)

I like what I see of 4th edition and look forward to getting my books when they're shipped to me on Wednesday. I'm going to go pick up the premade adventure to run for my friends so that I'll have some material while I familiarize myself with the new system. I agree with what Shev said about taunting- it is manufactured solely for MMO's. In Pen-and-Paper games, the warrior doesn't need to taunt due to being able to tank strictly from positional standing. Also, fighters in Pen-and-Paper can usually kick out enough damage that they are considered a threat, and may have other combat techniques that can allow them to stay in melee range of their foe, such as over-run or trip. Whereas in MMO's, tanks usually can't stop an enemy from rushing right past them to hit the mage, and there's a larger disparity in how well the warrior tanks compared to a non-tanking class. I've seen plenty of Pen-and-Paper games where the Rogue/Priest/Mage was the 'tank'.