In which MetalJim discusses a few of the finer points of the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons rules…

These are just some things that I didn’t notice when I posted my early playtest thoughts a week ago.

Physical Books…

I’m not the only one who has noticed that after you crack open your new 4E books, the pages tend to warp a little and the cover doesn’t want to close all the way.  For now, one good cure for this seems to be keeping the books stored in the slipcase that I got from Amazon.  Otherwise, store your books underneath other heavy books, and your covers will be okay.

Cover and Concealment…

Fourth edition gets rid of the concealment rules from 3e — no more checking to see if you “really” hit that drow or that wraith.  However, a skeleton archer could take cover behind a tombstone and get concealment from fog, and those bonuses do stack (-2 for each, -4 total).  Keep in mind that those cover and concealment penalties apply even if you are a warlock targeting a relfex save, or a wizard targeting the skeleton’s will save.  However, an area blast attack is less concerned about such things, and might ignore both cover and concealment depending on where you center your spell.

Elite Monsters…

All elite monsters get +2 to saves and 1 action point.  The save bonus makes it harder to stick ongoing damage effects onto major bad guys.  The rules suggest that bad guys with action points will tend to use them very early in the battle.  However, I can foresee a situation in the future where a player says something like this to me as a GM: “Why does the elite owlbear use its action point on me?  You must really hate me.  What did I ever do to you?”  By the way, solo monsters get a +5 bonus to saves against ongoing damage, and the player’s don’t get a lot of powers to lower those saves (unless maybe you are a wizard using an orb).

Monsters and Healing…

All heroic tier monsters (level 1–10) have one healing surge.  However, such monsters are not allowed to use the “second wind” action which is available to players.  After all, monsters should be doing monster things and attacking the party.  However, monsters with access to a cleric/ leader type can benefit from a power that lets them spend their one healing surge.

Big Monsters With Lots of Hit Points…

There is some concern that elite brutes and massive HP solo monsters will lead to situations where battles take a really, really long time to play out.  We’re talking about battles with more than 20 rounds of combat.  Now, each one of those rounds will take place in much less time than was ever possible in 3.5, but we’re still looking at a situation where the party’s big fight against the dragon could last two hours of real time.  Some folks are concerned that if the party is at all sub-optimal, or if the monster uses a lot of hit and run tactics, that you could end up with situations where the party runs out of special powers to use and the whole thing just starts to get tedious.  Be wary of sticking your party up against solo monsters that are just a little bit too tough, and be willing to houserule the hit points of your solo down a touch if it is clear that the party is winning at the same time that it is clear that the battle is taking too long to play out.

Keeping ahead of the Curve…

The math for combat in 4th edition is really, really tight.  A +1 bonus to your attack roll is a big deal, especially if you get that bonus every round.  The rules sort of assume that the average character will need to roll a 10 or an 11 every round to hit the relevant defense of the monster.  Even though your warlock is targeting against reflex saves, chances are he is still needing to roll an 11 or 12 to hit.  The math of the system is really punishing to a sub-optimal build.  A character with a lot of 14 scores in his abilities might be well rounded, but will be behind the curve.  There is a strong incentive in the system to load up your primary combat stat to an 18 or even a 20, even if that does make your character one dimensional.  The math is even more punishing if the party is fighting monsters above their current level.  At this point, I would say that lower level characters should put an emphasis on feats and powers that improve your chances to hit over feats that improve your damage.

Is the Skill Challenge System Broken?

This one has been the subject of a big debate over on ENworld, and that prompted this long blog post in response from one of the main 4E designers.  Here’s the deal…  A party of first level characters will have a bunch of skills in the +9 to +11 range.  Let’s say that the party is taking on a fairly basic skill challenge, where they need four success at DC 20 before rolling two failures.  If each die roll is a 50–50 coin flip, then the party will pass the challenge something like 25% of the time.  For an average sort of skill challenge, this math is clearly unacceptable.  If the party is rolling against “Easy” DCs of 15, then the party will win the overall challenge more than 75% of the time.  Depending on how much use the party makes of the “aid another” action, the skill challenge could become really easy (and really boring), again calling the underlying math into question.

Let’s say this… the new skill challenge system is an interesting start, but it is a new mechanic and still a work in progress.  A DM starting a 4E campaign should be prepared to ad-lib and house rule the skill challenges until he gets the right feel for the system.  A well designed skill challenge will reward role-playing (with some +2 or higher bonuses for good RP), and also encourage the party to be rolling against multiple types of skills each round.  A little bit of “aid another” goes a long way, as long as the whole party isn’t just standing behind the paladin and aiding his diplomacy roll by smiling and looking supportive.  In other words, the skill challenge system can work and be exciting, but the rules as written don’t give you enough practical advice or examples to make this work in an optimal way.

The Keith Baker blog post that I linked to above suggests some house rules, like allowing players to burn an action point to allow a re-roll during a skill challenge (to stave off failure), and also giving players two automatic successes in the event that someone rolls a natural 20.  As I said, it will take a little tweaking before you find the right mix of skill challenge rules that works well for you and for your players.  Expect to see me doing some more blogging about this over the course of the summer.

There is Already an Errata Page

Turns out the value of those first printings of 4E just went down a bit.  The overall editing isn’t too bad, but there are a few bits of noteworthy errata.  There are at least a dozen minor wording changes to the Player’s Handbook, although I don’t think that anything there is really going to mess up your game if you don’t take the time to make permanent edits in your hard copy.  The DMG is fine, but the Monster Manual features several noteworthy mistakes.  There’s a good half-dozen monsters where the basic attack damage is published as 1d10+5 when it really should have been 2d10+5 (or at least, mistakes similar to that one, where the damage value is just too low).

Still Waiting to Get Inside…

I anticipated this, but it seems like WotC may be dropping the ball to an even greater degree than I feared.  Producers working on the DDI tools only recently figured out that they should have been putting more effort into the character sheet builder than into the stupid miniature visualizer.  They were supposed to get the rules database online ASAP, but that still hasn’t happened, and they are now saying that we will be lucky to see the various components of the DDI project rolling out at a rate of one per month.  At this point, I’m not sure if we will see a working DDI game table any time in 2008.  Good thing that MapTool is still out there – I may have to get serious about looking into this.

But At Least There’s Some Cool Magazines in the Waiting Room…

Have you seen the new content that is being posted for the “official” magazines?  We’ve already had some nice rules expansions, including writeups for the warforged as a fully playable race, and some new wizard spells.  They also posted a free module for 5th level characters that looks to be a)cool, and b)actually playable.  If this is the sort of content that they expect people to pay money for each month, well, color me impressed.  Of course, because they are screwing up the digital initiative so badly, we may be enjoying free previews of this “premium” magazine content for six months or more.  The only real test here is whether the pace of publication of this material will remain strong, or whether it will slide after an early period of high quality releases.

I haven’t even had a chance yet to really consider how stealth and hiding interact with combat, but I get the impression that some folks are concerned with the implementation of these rules in 4E.

Let me make it clear, though, I am still enjoying fourth edition and find it impressive.  I think there’s plenty of potential here for that elusive thing called FUN.  However, we’re in the phase now where we can really kick the tires on this new car and look under the hood, and criticize a real product as opposed to a hypothetical one.

Okay - sorry if I tried to cover too many topics at once this week.  I won’t be around to respond to your comments on this post until late this weekend, but I am curious as to what concepts/ rules/ topics regarding 4E that you would like to see me discuss in greater detail in the weeks ahead.

In the meantime, I am off to play boardgames for 4 straight days at the 2008 Oasis of Fun.