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[Vermillion]

With an eye toward the Master of Dice prestige class. 

The 4th Edition of ye Olde Dungeons and Dragons is on the way.  Considering the hundreds of dollars I'd invested in 2nd, then 3rd, then 3rd and a half, I was more then a bit peeved when I first heard about it.

Now though, it's growing on me.

Notable items include

Chris Perkins on Vancian magic -- "It’s safe to say that the “Vancian” spellcasting system has received as much scrutiny as every other aspect of the D&D game. One thing we don’t want is a character running out of cool things to do in combat. In 4th Edition, all characters have a selection of at-will, per-encounter, and per-day resources.

Mmmm hmm.

Also, no more bards because fuck bards.  Fuck em.

[PurpleTowel]

Yes, yes, yes, OH GOD YES. This new spellcasting system sounds so fucking good. No longer will my Sun Elf wizard need two seperate prestige classes and six specially picked and meticulously chosen feats in order to ensure his viability in long-duration fights.

I will miss bards though. :-(

[The Iron Colonel]

This sounds promising. I pretty much got out of D&D a while ago due to the ridiculous amount of money I had to spend on books to even play, but if they finally release a stable edition that's not rife with problems, I could be coaxed back.

[Leunam]

I've heard useless skill checks are being removed along with feats. This was a few weeks ago, so I have no idea if that had been either confirmed or shot down.

[Evil Frank]

Anyone interested in buying my collection of 3.5 books?  I need to bank up for the new 4.0s..

[Vermillion]

Casts Ritual of Thread Resurrection

So for you mere mortal nerds the books hit in a little over two weeks.  But I, through dark pacts and terrible sacrfices (including say, the touch of a woman!) might get hold of them by Friday.  Because one of my friends claims he is a journalist you see.  A big ol nerdy journalist.

I'm incredibly excited.  It will be a welcome break from all my race car testing and weightlifting.

[The Iron Colonel]

Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of drinking beer and beating up extremely strong, well-trained men. Sounds like a good time to think about picking up the new 4th Ed books.

Any chance that they nerfed the hell out of rogues? I never understood why they got 11 billion skill points while my cleric got a shabby poke in the eye.

[Rigor_Mortis]

I never understood why they got 11 billion skill points while my cleric got a shabby poke in the eye.

Because unless they used those 11 billion skill points for Tumbling, their Sneak Attack was pretty much useless after the surprise round. :/   And let's not get into checking for traps. I don't know what kind of DM's you guys played with, but with ours, fumbled check traps roll almost always = roll a new rogue.

For 4.0 though, as long as Magic Missile is still totally broken, I'm a happy man.

[Ray Garraty #47]

If you can tolerate AICN, one of their writers got a hold of the new version and wrote a three-part review.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35776

For some reason, I had to google this - it didn't show up on AICN's search function - but I have read all three parts and the guy loved the new mechanics of the game.

[Dust Buster]

Some fans made a sort of mock-Player's Handbook based on information that's been gathered so far.  It's a very nice preview of the new rules:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amwhit/4e_PrRC_v2_6.pdf

[Cilmawyn]

Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of drinking beer and beating up extremely strong, well-trained men. Sounds like a good time to think about picking up the new 4th Ed books.

Any chance that they nerfed the hell out of rogues? I never understood why they got 11 billion skill points while my cleric got a shabby poke in the eye.

I'm not sure if they "nerfed the hell" out of them, but I do know that they have mentioned some places that other classes do have a lot more in the way of skills, especially considering the inclusion of "skill challenges" which allows skill uses in situations with rules for exp and whatnot, apparently.

[The Iron Colonel]

Sounds cool. I always just hated that rogues could take so many skills in ridiculous areas, like oration and pharmacology, while my cleric couldn't muster more than 1 point in religious knowledge.

Not that I'd know, of course, since I spend all my Saturdays banging chicks and punching midgets, not playing DnD. I'm gonna go hang some sheet rock then replace the struts on my car.

[porousnapkin]

They're also cutting down the number of skills considerably, from my understanding. So if you do get a skill, it will have more varied applications. I heard spot and listen were being combined into a perception skill, for instance. I agree, though, every character besides a rogue never felt like they had enough skills to be realistic. It seems like any normal human is going to have some points in swimming, but it was rare a player thought it was worth it to throw points into a skill that was usually pointless.

[Vermillion]

As if I'm at the mercy of some vindictive DM in the sky it turns out my friend did not recieve the promised 4th Ed books.  Le sigh.

[Dust Buster]

They're also cutting down the number of skills considerably, from my understanding. So if you do get a skill, it will have more varied applications. I heard spot and listen were being combined into a perception skill, for instance.

Yeah, they combined a lot of the skills.  Here's the list, from the PDF I linked above:

Strength
Athletics (climb, jump, swim)

Constitution
Endurance

Dexterity
Acrobatics (balance, escape, tumble)
Stealth (hide, move silently)
Thievery (disable trap, open lock, sleight of hand)

Intelligence
Arcana (knowledge arcana, detect magic)
History
Religion

Wisdom
Dungeoneering
Heal
Insight (sense motive)
Nature
Perception (spot, listen)

Charisma
Bluff
Diplomacy
Intimidate
Streetwise

[Melancholic Goat]

So, they combine all the skills to a somewhat retarded extent - now being a good swimmer will also entail the ability to jump really high - with the exception of speech skills? I mean, if climb, jump and swim are getting crammed into one skill, why in the blue fuck are bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate (three skills which I would propose are much more closely related than climbing, jumping and swimming) three separate skills?

Also, why are the disable trap, open lock etc skills labeled "thievery"? I thought the idea of changing the class name from Thief to Rogue in 3rd Edition was to highlight that rogues didn't need to be thieves at all? The name change was meant to indicate that all the typically "thief" skills could be put to perfectly good use in a solely dungeoneering context: it went along with the relaxing of alignment constraints for rogues/thieves, and the depiction of the Rogue as the all-purpose adventurer as opposed to the kleptomaniac who pisses the rest of the party off. So why have they gone and returned to "thievery"?

Is 4th edition going to be to 3rd what Oblivion was to Morrowind? I get that this isn't exactly official, yet, and most of what I've seen looks pretty cool, but... I dunno, man. My spidey sense is tingling, or something.



Also, IC, rogues got lots of skill points because that was the point of the class: it used skills for pretty much everything. If it had the same number of skill points per level as, say, a cleric, who would ever play a rogue? The cleric has hell of magic, heavy armour, turn undead, spontaneous heal/harm... the rogue has a few D6s worth of sneak attack damage. Not really a contest.

[Melancholic Goat]

Just double posting, don't mind me.

I agree, though, every character besides a rogue never felt like they had enough skills to be realistic. It seems like any normal human is going to have some points in swimming, but it was rare a player thought it was worth it to throw points into a skill that was usually pointless.

The beauty of it, of course, was that you didn't need any points to use the majority of skills. Just like in real life, the majority of people haven't gone on extensive swimming courses, but they can still swim. If you stripped off your armour and dumped your kit, swimming was easy without any skill points as long as you weren't going against some rapids or up a waterfall or whatever. For situations like that, it stands to reason that only those with extensive swimming training - which isn't going to be everyone - are going to be able to survive.

That's the point. That you have to work together as a party to overcome obstacles. The fighter dukes it out with the beasties, the rogue does the retarded stunts that get you all through crazy obstacles. In a normal river, the whole party could swim across. In a raging whirlpool, only the highly-trained athlete is going to be able to make it to the other side.

Too many people these days seem to treat pen and paper RPGs like videogames or MMOs. They want to be THE BEST at EVERYTHING; trouble is, everyone in the party wants to be THE BEST at EVERYTHING, and at the end of the day you're not left with a party of adventurers fighting together but a loose coalition of demigods who only travel together because the guys playing the game are mates. If you're skilled at everything, why do you need a party?

[The Iron Colonel]

I still hate rogues. Maybe just a bad experience, but it seems like the rogue is always played by the weasely guy who always knows how to break the rules and ruin the game for everyone.

[Dust Buster]

So, they combine all the skills to a somewhat retarded extent - now being a good swimmer will also entail the ability to jump really high - with the exception of speech skills? I mean, if climb, jump and swim are getting crammed into one skill, why in the blue fuck are bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate (three skills which I would propose are much more closely related than climbing, jumping and swimming) three separate skills?

Well, as a DM I actually love the combination of climb, jump, and swim.  I am now free to create retardedly elaborate obstacles and combat encounters without worrying about whether anyone in the party has enough points in "swim" and "climb."

The problem is that climb, swim, and jump are three skills that generally serve the same purpose.  To help get from point A to point B.  To get past the cliff/river/chasm.  The problem is, if I want a character who is good at that sort of thing, I either have to either guess what kind of obstacles we might face, or take points in all 3.

To me, it's the same as with the Perception skill.  Spot and Listen both serve the same purpose, even though they're not technically the same thing.  Having good eyesight doesn't necessarily entail good hearing, after all.  But the problem is that if you ever wanted to notice anything, you needed both.  So you'd have to spend twice as many skill points for what is essentially one skill.

[porousnapkin]

The beauty of it, of course, was that you didn't need any points to use the majority of skills...

That's definitely true. I understand this is sort of silly, but I never really thought of leveling up all my skills every level. I'd prefer it if skills like Swim and Jump just had a few points thrown in them at the beginning and weren't really leveled up later. It wouldn't serve any real purpose other than letting me feel like my character was a bit more fleshed out (say, I could throw three points in Swim early on, but most people only had one or two... Not enough of a difference to change gameplay, but a simple enough difference to make me feel unique).

Too many people these days seem to treat pen and paper RPGs like videogames or MMOs. They want to be THE BEST at EVERYTHING; trouble is, everyone in the party wants to be THE BEST at EVERYTHING, and at the end of the day you're not left with a party of adventurers fighting together but a loose coalition of demigods who only travel together because the guys playing the game are mates. If you're skilled at everything, why do you need a party?

Depends on the MMOs your playing. There's a good many where grouping is basically required because of exactly what you stated. Sorry for the detour.

Those secondary skills never seemed to exist in my 3rd edition groups. People were so focused on min-maxing that only a Rogue with too much Int had room to grab a few "useless" skills that most DMs ignored. But it was a vicious cycle. The players usually avoided certain skills and then I as a DM had to avoid them in play as well. It seemed to me that while a fighter COULD select swimming as one of the few skills he was going to be able to keep maxed, every fighter would always choose the same skills so he felt useful in the group. Character differences existed, but primarily in combat.

I guess trimming skills wouldn't make this any better. And giving people more skill points would just lead them to new ways to min-max. My problems probably with my players rather than the game. I prefer role-playing and they prefer roll-playing.