DnDWiki:Dungeons and Dragons 4

D&D 4ed logo

4dventure counter on WotC website

Wizards of the Coast announced Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition on 15th August 2007, substituting all articles and other internet activities with the Countdown 4dventure page. On the next day it was declared that 4dventure is indeed the next version of D&D rules.

The lead developer for 4th edition is Mike Mearls, other members of the development team including Rich Baker, Andy Collins, Bill Slavicsek, Rob Heinsoo and James Wyatt. One of the illustrators is William O'Connor. Playtesters are to be selected from RPGA members and people who will sign up at dndinsider.com, the tests will start somewhere in September 2007. The characters that will be used in playtesting are:

• Dwarven Cleric
• Human Fighter
• Elven Ranger
• Eladrin Rogue
• Tiefling Wizard

Known system details

Roles

There is a lot of talking about "roles": character roles in the party, monster roles in the adventure, etc. It is still unconfirmed if the roles are just a conceptual view or will form a solid part of the system. However, it has been said that a fighter will never be penalised for being a "tank", as a mage will not be penalized for overusing the magic missile.

James Wyatt stated that there are four character roles: Defender (fighters, paladins), Leader (clerics, warlords), Controller (wizards), Striker (rogues, rangers) - see below for the link to his interview on YouTube.

Matthew Sernett gave four examples of monster roles. They are Brute - frontline fighter, Skirmisher - the one who runs in and out of combat, Lurker - probably attacking from hidden places and Archer - artillery striking from behind the others. Rich Baker also works on something called "mission statements" for monsters. The design aim is to give the DM the guidelines for using monsters, designating their targets, defining the tactics, etc--and to fit it all into a stat block.

Levels

There will be 30 character levels, as in Arcana Evolved instead of 20 as in D&D 3.5. It will take the same time to reach 30th level as it does now to reach 20th. Every level will grant new abilities.

Levels 1-10 are considered "heroic", when the adventures are bound to battle orcs and giants in local encounters. Levels 11-20 are "paragon" with classic fantasy threats like dragons and saving a whole kingdom. Levels 21-30 are "epic", when it's all about saving the world or a plane of existence. Leveling up will be geared towards every second or third game session.

Ability modifiers will be equal to (ability score/2)-2 instead of (ability score/2)-5. This means either negative scores or no ability penalties.

The game mechanics will be redesigned to be more scalable and work on all levels in the same way. This will also mean abandoning some very traditional rules like fireball doing 1d6/level damage.

The highest level monster in the Monster Manual will be neither Tarrasque nor the Elder Red Dragon.

Classes

There will be fewer character classes than in D&D 3.5 (11) but more than 3. It was not disclosed what the exact changes will be. Character powers will be explicitly classified into at will, per encounter and per day. Fighters will rely on their weapon choice much more than other classes, and will have different abilities and tactics depending on their weapon of choice starting from the first level.

Wizards will have different spellcasting rules than the traditional ("Vancian") model. They will be able to cast spells of up to 30-th level, where a power level actually corresponds to the level a caster obtains the ability. Magic will rely on so called power sources, two of them being divine and arcane. However, not all 30 of the spell levels will be populated. Some of the spells will be gone, Wish for sure. There will be no rules for disrupting spellcasting.

Magic items will not require special feats nor XP to create. Wizards will be able to use a maneuver called "wizard strike". It will be possible to score a critical with an attack spell (and sometimes even more than one critical).

Wizards will be able to specialise in a tradition (which is not just a selection of spells, but something more). Four archetypal items accompanying a wizard will be used to cast different spells: the orb is associated with terrain control, manipulation and divination; the staff is used for forcefully projected powers as well as flight and telekinisis; the tome is for teleportation, summoning, shapechanging; and the wand for long-range effects and protection. Every spell will be an orb, staff, tome or wand spell. It will be possible to cast without the items at hand, suffering from penalties. Some time after posting, the D&D Insider article that had explained this was edited with the tome striked out, which leaves three types of spells.

Paladins will not have to be Lawful Good. Psionics although not included in core rule books will be covered by supplements. Prestige classes will either remain part of the system or there will be another equivalent for them.

There will certainly be warlord, wizard and sorcerer classes in core rules, as well as the warlock. A swordmage will be a type of fighter that uses magic to fight better, but it might not be ready yet by the time of publishing the core rulebooks. Warlock class design and development is already done, and it is more of a striker than a controller.

Multiclassing will be redesigned so that gish characters will be effective and viable on all levels, but outperformed by both straight warriors in melee battle power and straight mages in magic. XP will model character's level and experience, but do it more smoothly, no exponential curve. They will cease to be a expendable resource, will not be required for casting and will not be drained by monsters.

Races

Humans will be made more "flavourful". Racial traits will be available and start working from the first level. Racial feats can be taken later when a character progresses in levels to enhance them. Racial substitution levels will be removed from the system in favour of such feat-powered progression. Racial traits will enhance the suggested classes without enforcing any choices: for example, halflings are more lucky and dwarves are more enduring - the first trait is best for rogues and the second for fighters, but they are not completely useless elsewhere.

One classic race, gnomes, will disappear from the core books, but they will appear in Monster Manual. Tieflings will be present in Player's Handbook, looking more demonic than before. Changeling from Eberron campaign setting may be included as well.

Elves are confirmed as a playable race, though their roleplaying description changed greatly. They are now impulsive race, which roams the woods in small tribes. They are said to have fey heritage and are relatives to eladrin. They still hate the drow, though. In Faerun, ar-tel-quessir (moon elves), sun elves and gold elves will retain their names, but be treated as eladrin in terms of game mechanics.

Combat

HP stay. Ancient dragons are told to have over 1000 hp. Also save or die spells will be replaced with spells that take away hit points, and then certain rules will tie hp loss with conditions like "bloodied" (at half hp). Massive damage will make the character suffer from penalties for the rest of the day, but will not kill.

Encounters mechanics will be completely redesigned to make it much more intuitive than the existing EL/CR system. A typical monster will last 3 to 5 rounds and have an appropriately small number of special signature abilities. The number of monsters will be assumed to be the same as the number of PC party members, no more one big opponent with occasional sidekicks. However, this number will represent not the actual number of monsters but their roles, and any role can be played by either a real monster or by a trap or by something else. Thus, traps will not cap at CR 10, there will be ready to use traps up to CR 30 as well.

Monsters will have a big choice of abilities, and the generic set of level-appropriate attack bonuses and defenses will make it possible to actually generate new monsters on the fly. Feral troll will have an ability to regenerate 20 hit points with a swift action instead of bluntly getting back 5 hp per round.

The list of things that will be provoking attacks of opportunity will be much shorter and free of exceptions, and they will mean more to fighters than to other classes. Monsters' reach will be stated for every attack (for example, it will be possible to have reach 15 ft for hands and 5 ft for bite). Some other combat rules changes will also speed up the play. Initiative rules seem to stay the same, and there will be an action called "immediate counterattack". Full attack action will be removed.

Life or death saving throws will be gone for good. AC variations (flat-footed, touch) are gone as well. They will be combined in a system of four standard defences: AC, Reflex, Fortitude, Will. That also means that the spellcasters will have to make attack rolls (for example, versus Reflex for fireball). They also can make critical hits with that.

Crits are on a roll of 20 and confirmation rolls are no longer needed. Damage from crits is max weapon damage, no more double damage or multiplied damage. Magic weapons give extra damage for crits for example a +1 frost sword does a extra 1d6 on a crit though nobody knows if the extra 1d6 comes from the frost or the +1.

Miscellaneous

Greyhawk will not be default campaign setting in core books anymore. Instead of Greyhawk authors will use some generic fantasy world (perhaps even unnamed) which will include some Greyhawk icons along with real-world mythology. This setting will utilize the concept named Points of Light by the authors - the world where small isles of relatively civilized regions (the size of a city at most) are surrounded by great and untamed darkness full of monsters, wonders and uncertainty. Updated Forgotten Realms campaign setting will be released in 2008, followed by Eberron in 2009. Neither the Realms nor Eberron will be reworked to fit into the Points of Light concept.

The Planes of Existence will also be redesigned because individual Elemental Planes were not extensively used for adventuring anyway. Each world will have its own set of astral dominions, but some can be shared. The Nine Hells will be a deific abode with Asmodeus as the resident deity. He and the other devils will be once-rebelled angels. The Abyss will be a "wound in the landscape of the Elemental Tempest", with demons being twisted elemental creatures. The Feywild will be an "echo" of the mortal world, and the home to faerie. The Shadowfell will be the land of the dead. The Elemental Chaos will replace all Inner Planes. The Astral Sea will host all dominions of the gods, from Mount Celestia to Nine Hells. Forgotten Realms will have their pantheon reduced (some deities will be degraded to demigod level).

Devils and demons will become more distinctive, with devils being horned, tailed and winged humanoids who fight with weapons. There will be no erinyes. Ice devils (gelugons) will be more related to yugoloths. The game statistics for spinagon (spined devil) are already revealed.

The skills system has been reported to be significantly different from Star Wars Saga Edition: in the playtesting reports, Knowledge skills have seraparate names: Streetwise, History, Religion, etc. Alignment system will change, letting some of the monsters (and characters?) to remain "unaligned".

Bahamut, the platinum dragon, will be a part of the pantheon as the god of justice, protection and honor. Pelor, Moradin and Kord are also mentioned as gods.

Compatibility

An event called Spellplague will be introduced in order to allow to incorporate 4ed stuff in the game.

A new version of OGL will be used, no d20 STL, tiered or otherwise.

Release schedule

As of now, little is known about the actual content of the new products, only the release dates were announced:

• Rules peeks, teasers and other preliminary information - are being posted already
• Demonomicon in D&D Insider - October 2007
• Some 4ed monsters debut in D&D Miniatures - November 2007
• Wizards Presents: Classes and Races - December 18, 2007 (can be preordered on Amazon.com)
• Wizards Presents: World and Monsters - January 15, 2008(can be preordered on Amazon.com)
• Introductory adventure and quick start rules - April 2008
• Player's Handbook 4e (288 pages, price around $30) - June 6th, 2008
  • According to Mike Mearls, core development on the Player's Handbook is almost complete. The final draft will be handed over on October 5, 2007.
• Character Record Sheet - May 2008
• Monster Manual 4e (288 pages, 300+ monsters) - June 6th, 2008
• Dungeon Master's Guide 4e (256 pages) and DM's Screen - June 6th, 2008

There will be at least 7 books of D&D 4ed in 2008. Besides, A Grand History of the Realms will be released as a campaign supplement for Forgotten Realms. It will be based on previously web released material with new art and additional entries from authors including Ed Greenwood and Eric Boyd.

There will be free adventures with pregenerated 1st level characters and a summary of basic 4E rules: the WotC's one will be called Wizard's Amulet, Necromancer Games will post Clark Peterson's Winter's Tomb as soon as they will be allowed to post 4ed.

There will also be an online software package called D&D Insider that will support fast and easy NPC generation, efficient creation of maps and dungeons, etc.

DMG will contain a section on how to make monsters weaker.

D&D Insider

This is a site where people will be able to read Dungeon and Dragon magazines as well as use some applications designed to enhance game play, such as:

• Interactive Character Sheet which allows to create a character.
• Character Builder - an application that allows to make a "virtual miniature" of a character.
• DM & player vault for keeping and sharing different game-related materials.
• Virtual Tabletop - an application that allows to actually play with other people across the globe.

Starting from 2008 the full range of benefits offered by D&D Insider will be available only to subscribers. The subscription fees have been announced as $9.95 per month. As for now D&D Insider is available for free preview until the end of 2007.

It will be possible to put "decals" like tattoos or other symbols in character visualiser.

D&D Insider will facilitate and enhance the game, but won't be necessary for any play.

The price for enabling access to online variant of a book you already have will be around $1-$2. Full subscription to D&D Insider will not be required for that.

Links to official material

Promotional PDFs

• About 4e
• 4e core rulebooks fact sheet
• 4e D&D Insider
• 4e D&D Minis
• Keep on the Shadowfell
• 4e Product Release Schedule

Design and development

(Dragon articles require that you sign-in to D&D Insider to view the content.)

• Design & Development: Race, Why Race Matters (James Wyatt)
• Design & Development: Class, Fighters: Choice of Weapons (Rob Heinsoo)
• Design & Development: Power Source, Martial Power Source (Mike Mearls)
• Design & Development: Monster, What Can a Dragon Do in a Round? (James Wyatt)
• Design & Development: Dungeon Design (Mike Mearls)
• Design & Development: Points of Light (Rich Baker)
• Design & Development: Wizards and Wizard Implements (Bruce Cordell) - the original version is posted here
• Playtest Reports: Castle Smoulderthorn

Videos

• 4ed presentation videos on WotC website
• Behind the scenes: YouTube: Part 1, YouTube: Part 2
• Interviews: YouTube: Mike Mearls, YouTube: James Wyatt, YouTube: Rob Heinsoo

Insider

• http://dndinsider.com/

Sources

Developers' blogs on Gleemax are not cited explicitly because both of the obvious nature of such a source and the big amount of information produced there.