The Gaming Den

There are a few articles about playtesting on WotC


ETA: WotC recently purged all of their articles. (only recent and discontinued articles surivived)

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4arch/main

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1187360424[/unixtime]]

In this write up, the only thing they seemed to learn is that Polymorph is bad and warriors need maneuvers. But it still seems like they are going to trot out warriors as Diablo II characters (I am a Jabazon, so I have multi-thrust), while Wizards are still probably playing Battlefield Artillery.

I seriously hope you don't have to pay slots for those special weapon manuevers. It'd really suck if you got stuck playing an axe warrior because all your manuevers are axe only.

why is the trailer for 4e retarded?

Dude, D&D characters pioneered only having access to a limited set of weapons. What are you on?

Also, the only weapons a WoW Hunter can't use is board and maces... They get all the other weapon options, they're a frickin' Hunter. Rogues don't get two handed weapons; Paladin don't get daggers and fist weapons; Druids and Shaman don't get swords (and Druids also don't get axes, go figure); while Warriors can use anything and the other three classes can't use two-handers, axes, or maces - but they don't really hit things as a main practice, so do they care?

Can a D&D Wizard use an axe as a default option?

-Crissa

The purpose of the Hunter is to argue that every piece of equipment is Hunter gear, even stuff he can't use. I'm serious, that's in the fucking book.

That wish list thread on the 4E forum is scary. I've never seen so many people practically wet themselves over the hexblade

Can a D&D Wizard use an axe as a default option?

D&D gives a lot of little tricks and cheats with minimal effort to allow wizards to do this suboptimal option. Or for something less dumb, it's not all that hard nor is it gamebreaking (in itself) for clerics to use greatswords or longbows.

Book of Nine Swords, the source which this 'weapon manuever' crap is based off of, intentionally made their system weapons agnostic to cover a wide range of characters. There are some instances of characters getting bonuses for using the 'right' weapon but they're overall pretty minor and your character won't be torpedo'd for, say, fighting like Captain America for the Desert Wind chain.

[cheap joke] It put a hex on them[/cheap joke]

Well, the hexblade does represent a fighter/mage archetype, and hey! It may be better in 4e!

Because it is the perfect idea of what a fighter/mage should be, not like that utterly broken Duskblade.

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1187406925[/unixtime]]Because it is the perfect idea of what a fighter/mage should be, not like that utterly broken Duskblade.

I thought the Duskblade was just plain shitty in general.

And hopefully the gish base class won't follow the stupid "noun"-blade naming schema.

Agreed. Although I like the fact that they attempted to combine casting and melee with the Duskblade, it still didn't work very well, and naturally the WotC boards decided it must be broken, on the grounds that it exists.

And the naming system was stupid.

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1187377488[/unixtime]]

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1187360424[/unixtime]]

In this write up, the only thing they seemed to learn is that Polymorph is bad and warriors need maneuvers. But it still seems like they are going to trot out warriors as Diablo II characters (I am a Jabazon, so I have multi-thrust), while Wizards are still probably playing Battlefield Artillery.

I seriously hope you don't have to pay slots for those special weapon manuevers. It'd really suck if you got stuck playing an axe warrior because all your manuevers are axe only.

Nah. The part which is really going to suck, and I mean really suck hard is the part where some characters will be stuck with some axe-only maneuvers and some longsword-only maneuvers and then they'll have to set more resources on fire to get multiple weapons and still suck anyway because they can only use one or the other at any given time.

As far as I can tell, characters are going to be getting Complete Warrior style Combat Styles as non-swappable class features. And at that point characters are going to not only get repeatedly shafted against the wall like they had Weapon Focus or Herpes - but even when it works it's going to be about as fun as listening to someone describe their Diablo II character ("And then I use Strafe and shoot like all kinds of people!")

I just came home from a 15 hour work day, but it sounds really likely. I want to see if I can beat Phoenix Duplication - I made this prediction on August 17th.

-Username17

DnD 4th edition presentation part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The key here is this statement:

“Yeah. I thought about going high Con and using a hammer, but I wanted to start with the chance to make a couple of attacks, so I’m using rain of blows as my good weapon attack, and I went with high Wis so that I can switch to the better oppy powers later.”

“My elf fighter uses a spear. I like the speed and the option to go past AC.

"Rain of Blows" is going to be some kind of selectable class feature that will make you good at hitting people with a your weapon. It will not only equire you to be using certain kinds of weapons, it will also run off of a different stat spread than other weapon attacks.

So the direction of travel is "More Diablo" - they are developing ability trees similar to those in Diablo II. You'll start going up chains that make you better with maces, or spears, or claws, and then you'll be pretty much stuck on those rails forever.

Well, not forever. Who is willing to take bets that in fact many of the options won't continue to have available continuations past certain levels? In short, it might be entirely viable to jack your Charisma up and fight with a Rapier for a while, only to find out that from 8th level on there's nothing good, maybe even nothing at all for your character to take that will synergize with his stat spread and weapon commitment.

History has shown us that there are a lot of viable low level options that just sort of... stop... getting... good... things. Like the Bard or the Glaive Fighter. In AD&D that was supposedly a feature, but WotC has carried on the tradition without even calling attention to the fact that they are doing it.

-Username17

Tiny question, is there anything wrong with Diablo-like ability trees?

virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1187455062[/unixtime]]Tiny question, is there anything wrong with Diablo-like ability trees?

Yes.

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1187457176[/unixtime]]

virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1187455062[/unixtime]]Tiny question, is there anything wrong with Diablo-like ability trees?

Yes.

-Username17

To give a more lengthy answer, in Diablo you have to invest about 20 points in an offensive ability before it's any good. You get one point a level.

So, you have the option of (1) investing one point in 20 skills, and sucking, or (2) investing 20 points in one skill, not sucking, and being completely one-dimensional. But you'll have a very strange pattern of skill investiture, with probably 20 points in a level 1 skill, then investments of 1 until you can get up to a high level ability and sink all your points in that. It doesn't work out this way in Diablo because people can leech.

Taking multiple trees is essentially multiclassing, and if low level abilities are objectively worse than high level ones, you might still end up sucking even if you invest with the right sorts of patterns.

In addition, lots of the abilities intentionally suck. Prerequisites like Dodge, Mobility, and Weapon Focus which nobody cares about. Oops, that is D&D. I mean prerequisites like Shock Web and Charged Bolt Sentry.

Yeah, the only way they can possibly do the weapon abilities is if they're a giant list and you get access to all of them based on fighter level (similar to cleric casting), and then can choose what maneuvers you want for the day.

If they go all diablo 2 on us... it'll totally suck bad. That will pretty much show that the designers have learned almost nothing from the past years that 3rd edition has been out. Which honestly, isn't surprising given that they tend to tune out people like Frank who criticize their rules.

Diablo 2's ability trees are designed so that you're supposed to irrevocably invest skill points into abilities that will be obsolete in a few levels. You're never actually going to cast fire bolt ever again once you get fireball, but you've got 12 levels where you've either got to live with a non-level-appropriate fire bolt while you save your skill points, or set fire to those skill points by putting them into a spell that you'll never use again after level 12.

Even when you've got access to two spells that it might actually make tactical sense to use in the same battle, you can't create an organic build that uses both of them, because you can invest 100% of your skill points into one skill to make it awesome up to some arbitrary cap, and having a tactical or utility skill at a level higher than 1 is not worth decreasing your primary attack's damage by any appreciable amount in virtually any game.

Synergies might have helped this a little bit if they were set up cleverly, but most of the actual synergies just mean that you're devoting even more skill points to buffing up your one effective skill to the exclusion of anything else.

There are a few places where they apparently screwed up and accidentally gave you a skill that actually has enduring usefulness, but the general rule is that in order to be competitive at high levels, you need to disregard all your low-level options, and once you actually pick anything to be good at, you can never switch.

I've had an experienced player explain to me that the standard way to play a Sorceress (the main caster) is to go through normal difficulty--that is, go through the entire game on the first difficulty--fighting with javelins and not spending a single skill point, because you're not going to get skills worth making any investiture in until the top 1-2 tiers of the skill tree.

The WoW talent tree is at least somewhat better in that you don't get an obvious and powerful advantage by not spending points at low levels.

Catharz at [unixtime wrote:1187458188[/unixtime]]So, you have the option of (1) investing one point in 20 skills, and sucking, or (2) investing 20 points in one skill, not sucking, and being completely one-dimensional.

Aside from those gimme 1-point passives that crop up, yup, that's about it.

You see, the part of that quote which makes me uneasy is where the guy basically says, "I choose high Wis because at level 12 I'll be able to jump onto a better ability track when this one starts to dry up." Can I hit a dev with a stick and yell at them for this? Because this is sort of specifically one of the things that should be avoided.

The rest of this I could sort of imagine a way to do in a manner that wouldn't be too bad. If they kept the lessons they seemed to learn with retraining and had a limited number of broad categorical paths with well designed symmetries, they might be able to pull something off. ("Spear" abilities seems more prone to nonsense then Penetrating/reach/heavy, with the longspear belonging to those categories.)

Manxome at [unixtime wrote:1187459528[/unixtime]]Diablo 2's ability trees are designed so that you're supposed to irrevocably invest skill points into abilities that will be obsolete in a few levels. You're never actually going to cast fire bolt ever again once you get fireball, but you've got 12 levels where you've either got to live with a non-level-appropriate fire bolt while you save your skill points, or set fire to those skill points by putting them into a spell that you'll never use again after level 12.

Diablo 2 is a perfect example of what not to do in an RPG.

Seriously, I don't even know why people liked that game. It's pretty stupid. You take one ability, pump it up, then you just get in game and spam it. There aren't any tactics beyond the obvious. Your character is totally one-dimensional and boring. Not to mention you had no plot choices at all, and just went from point A to point B killing everything that moves.

God, that game sucked.

WotC wrote:Sometime in the spring, when all of D&D Insider’s digital components go live, we’ll begin charging a monthly subscription fee to access some of our online content. We don’t have final pricing details ready to share, but one subscription fee will cover all aspects of D&D Insider, including more than two print issues’ worth of editorial content each month. You’ll get access to the amazing set of tools D&D Insider will provide—the D&D Game Table, the D&D Character Creator, and the Dungeon Master’s Toolkit, all of which will be unveiled in the coming months. You’ll also get more of the great content you’ve come to expect from Dragon and Dungeon over the past umpteen-dozen years.

(emphasis mine)

Son of a Bitch! They are going to charge for their online shit. fucking hell... excuse me while I go rant and rave and piss and moan about this and then go find a job so I can pay the bastards...

This assumes they even get the digital tools completed. Remember how the old Master tools for 3.0 worked out.

I think they will get that out. They've made it abundantly clear that they want in on the MMO market, so they're going to do what they can get away with to have their player base pay them continually.

As for whether their tools would be able to handle any house rules, that's a different story, as that was what made 3.X playable for me.

"All characters have at will, per encounter, and per day uses they will have to keep track of. No more mages pulling out crossbows. You will never be penalized for doing what you do best – your clearly defined roles."

Hm. On the one hand, that sounds like trying to move toward a unified character resource model. On the other, instead of /day abilities going away, now everyone has to deal with them, apparently.

And I'm also interested in the sort of ways they want to ensure (/enforce) that classes be able to continue to act within their "clearly defined role".