4th edition - rumours and discussion and so on

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With Mystra gone, so is Elminster and the Seven Sisters as well. Most of Drizzt`s buddies are most likely gone, as well as Entreri. Well established characters, for many years, are now tossed in the trash. Seems like they are just trying to emulate world of warcraft, in a way, in an attempt to sell more stuff. Alienating the people who played d&d in the good old days, and replacing them with MTV-jugend.

 

you know, entreri may still be around. i don't know all the benefits of being a shade but i know a bunch of the ones in the erevis cale novels were at least as long lived as elves with a couple 2 thousand years old. bruenor may still be alive but i dont see anyway for catti brie or wulfgar or regis to have survived(not sure about regis, how long do halflings live?)

 

Slightly longer then humans. If it is one hundred years after 3.5, only Dwarves and Elves of the 4 ed core races have the life expectancy to live long enough.

I do imagine Halaster will remain, unless Undermountain somehow is destroyed. I'm assuming Kelban "Blackstaff" Arunsen (sp?) is dead since, I believe, he was also a chosen of Mystra.

 

The only settings I ever got too interested in were Ravenloft and Birthright, both cast aside when they went to third edition. I'll be looking more at the actual game rather than the worlds that WotC create.

From the sounds of it they want to make each character sound cool. But will they alienate the people that have played for years?

 

khelben "blackstaff" arunsun was killed off in the year 1374 DR(year of lightning storms), he passed the real blackstaff to his apprentice Tsarra. she also got his memories & maybe part of his soul?. he died to reopen the City of Hope, a city helped brought into creation by the sharn & a bunch of magical artifacts. IIRC halaster is described as being killed off trying to stop the the initial assualt by shar on mystra through the weave. we have seen the 7 sisters & elminster survive the death of the former lady of magic so maybe they survive this time also, i just can't see them killing off the ol' big E himself. course i thought the same about khelben till i read the novel, man was i ticked.

edit, nope halaster is listed as dying earlier trying to stop something in undermountain. not during the spellplague.
i hate to say it but like a lot of others have said it seems like they are trying to make forgotten world of warcraft realms

 

Argh! No Halaster... God he was one of my favorite characters and Undermountain was one of my favorite and arguably the coolest dungeons in the D+D world. I guess I can still see a point for Waterdeep, but in my mind, it always the base of operation to go into Skullport or Undermountain (or have fun with aboleths in the sewers).

 

The biggest problem I have keeping groups together is distance. That and my players keep moving on me...

 

well undermountain is still there is has just gotten . . . a little more dangerous without a single guiding force behind it. of course thats in 3.5 so who the heck knows what they will do to it in 4. heh, maybe it will become a 25 person raid dungeon.(god, i can't believe i just said that & i haven't ever played WoW)

 

The complete rape of the cosmology is what saddens me the most. Sure, The Planes were probably never going to get any more material, but at least they were *there*. Now the entire thing has been dumped for uninspired nonsense.

Well, as-is I don't treat anything introduced in 3E as canon, just nice suggestions. I don't think the 4E setting will even be worth cherry picking over though.

 

Actually, I could see a 25 player raid on a Dungeon. Just the problem of having 25 players might be hard to work with...

 

It's been confirmed that old El is still around, but quite hampered because everytime he tries using magic, something awful happens.

Halaster died when he tried to stave off the spellplague. Unfortunatly, some drow happened to disrupt his ritual and his self shattered. Quite flavourful, if you ask me.

 

ok another reason to dislike it.
they had Tyr kill Helm in jealosy over Tymora which so infuriated ilmater that he withdrew from the triad & know tyr has been ? by AO so basically torm is taking over his own spot, tyrs spot & maybe even helms spot. now just why in the h e double hockey sticks would the god of Justice start acting like Bane? thats just goofy.

 

What if they actually make Baldur`s Gate 3 someday.....That means BG3 will be with 4th ed rules......Horrible thought.

 

Apparently it's leaked. Anyone care to go and see what the general opinion is?

 

Yeah, it's been leaked alright. And, admittedly, I took a peek. Let's just say that the monsters are now much simpler, the system more streamlined and everything more focused on tactical stuff. Monsters now have their stats, and a few powers, including their weapons. It's all much easier to read now, although I have to admit the monster stats look like Magic: The Gathering cards now. Kinda. This means that monsters won't be casting any spells, not even dragons. Liches have few special powers like everyone else and that's it. Some powers are spell-like, but still there's only few. All has been focused much more on combat.
The monsters now have roles corresponding to what they do best, like Soldier, Artillery or Leader, for example. The Minion role made me squint an eyebrow, since it's basically a monster of that level, but has only 1 HP so they're like the "mob" monsters of MMORPGs. Even cyclops minions have that teeny, measely 1 HP, but I guess that's just for it all to be more epic and such. These roles, however, are not templates, and every monster in the book already has his own marked there.

But anyways, alignment's still in, although now there's just Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil and Chaotic Evil. This is kinda confusing. Oh, and Sigil was mentioned.

 

That sounds retarded. Not only does it fail to fix the problems with alignment, it fails to get what's good about alignment also.
Actually, thinking on it more - that's probably the lamest thing they could have come up with. It's actually rather shocking in how badly thought out it is. At least with the usual alignment system it's well thought out and works well in the setting. This, on the other hand, is just bleagh.

 

The community is split up. One part thinks 4e the best thing since sliced bread, the other one doesn't think it's D&D anymore.

Then there are those who admit that rules- and balance-wise, 4e is great. But they say it doesn't have to do anything with an RPG anymore and it's more like a strategy game with some roleplaying elements.

I'm in the latter boat. 4e is fine if you don't care about immersive gameplay and you like minis and all the stuff that comes with them. It's all about action and tries to capture a very cinematic style of play.

Unfortunatly, it's Michael Bay movie-style: big explosions, allegedly 'cool' action, very polished and fast, but ultimatly soulless and very, very sleek. You could call it the "teflon edition".

The rules require the player to suspend disbelief a lot more than in 3e. For me, healing up through six hours rest, using certain powers only once per encounter or per day (despite the fact that the required actions could be executed more often), and using a crossbow or sling to attack enemies in a burst of 3x3 squares in one round is just not believable anymore. It violates my common sense.

Add the very restrictive classes (multiclassing is a joke) to that, and the overall cutting down of options (even in combat), there have to be a lot of house rules or a new edition before I'll touch anything new from WotC again.

 

Pretty much on the same boat, Fabius. What it does it does well, but sadly that thing isn't really my thing. For one, most of the monsters don't even have descriptions really. The lore checks tell you something, but they seem to rely mostly on pictures to get the message over. Crafting was removed, too. And, all in all, it's all about combat now. Sure, you can do other stuff, but the system kinda feels like wanting you to kill as many monsters as possible and leave the talking for those moments when there's nothing to kill in sight.

 

Well, crafting is done through rituals now. That's actually a good idea.