Fourth Edition D&D Tea Reading, Part III

[kent_allard_jr]

Wizards just posted a brief primer for their "D&D Experience" and there are a few things to note:

• They refer to the following classes: clerics, fighters, rangers, rogues, paladins, warlocks, warlords and wizards. No mention of barbarians, bards, druids, monks or druids, so I guess they've been dropped.
  
• They provide more details on the Healing Surge mechanic:

  Once during each encounter, you can take a standard action called a second wind; this gives you a certain amount of hit points back equal to your healing surge value and gives you a +2 bonus to all your defenses until the start of your next turn. You then tick off one of your healing surges for the day.

  I guess a rogue, therefore, would use 6+Con bonus healing surges a day, and each surge would heal 6+Con bonus points of damage.
  
• There's also more information on action points: You get 1 action point, plus 1 for every 2 encounters. Action points can only be used once per encounter, and they give an extra standard action. They reset to 1 after an "extended rest" (which resets HP to full, by the way -- a clear improvement over the old days).

I'll miss the druid, the one class that can't really use other classes for proxies (assuming multiclassing is still allowed), but I remain cautiously optimistic in other respects.

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

They've been pretty clear that all the major classes not releasing now will be in PHB2.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

That's nice, but ... when is that coming out? 2009? By then people will have already abandoned their old characters.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

I think that trying to directly convert over old characters is a losing idea anyway, unless you want to start at 1.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I really liked it when they did away with anything that was "per-encounter", and I'm sad it's back. I find it too fourth-wall-breaking, making it hard to mentally stay in the world and in the character, not to mention that in many cases, it's hard to adjudicate when one encounter ends and another begins, or what qualifies as an encounter. If you're fleeing from monster A and run into monster B, is it a new encounter? Does it depend on whether monster A has lost track of you? What about traps or puzzles? If you're walking through desolate woods and come upon an ornate marble fountain bubbling with crystal clear water, obviously some sort of puzzle, is that an encounter? In 2E or whenever, it was an encounter. But suddenly being able to use an ability again in such a situation is absurd. (DM:"You come upon a fount--" Player:"I use Healing Surge!!")

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

In fairness, they seem to have a fairly clear definition of when the "per-encounter" timer resets: after a 5-minute rest. So if you flee from a monster and run into another, that's all one encounter, because there's no "rest" in between.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

So can those abilities be used after a five minute rest if you DON'T run into something else? Otherwise it's still silly: "Phew...now that we've rested, let's go find something to beat up so we can use that healing ability again!"

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Well I suspect most "per-encounter" powers are really only useful in combat. (Note that a lot of old spells are now "rituals" which presumably aren't practical during a melee.) I know you can use as many "healing surges" (up to the daily maxima) as you like during the "rest" phases; maybe the same applies to other "per-encounter" abilities?

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Keeping rangers in over druids: big, big, big BOO. D&D druid's probably the only standard class that I feel hasn't been better represented in another system

[mooninj4.livejournal.com]

NOOOOoooooooOOOOooooooOOOooooooooOOooooOoooooo how will the world survive without bardic music?! BEER JUST DOES NOT COMPETE!

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

... and how will we fight our enemies without the aid of burlesque dancing (http://www.feartheboot.com/comic/default.aspx?c=61)?