Fighters will basically have "spells" in the form of fighter maneuvers with limited slots or something? How the fuck is that any good? If I wanted to have "spells" I'd be a fucking wizard!

RPGPundit

Erm...4ed?

Edit: Being a bit more constructive. Yeah, seen that way, it seems a bit off. I hope that it's more a case of extraordinary abilities, than actual 'magic spells', but some stuff seen so far seems to suggest that magic will be something more readily available to everyone. Have to wait and see, i guess.

If you've read Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords then you'll understand the basic concept. They're basically refreshable sets of special moves that allow fighting types to transcend the normal limitations of class and level. It brings them far closer to the damage dealing capabilities of the arcane classes, without having to bother with spellbooks or daily memorisation. Each fighting discipline has a unique feel, leading to a more flavourful (and potent) approach to melee combat.  

Some of the styles within are mystical in content, although others (such as Iron Heart) focus on high-octane damaging maneuvers, like leaping over an opponent and gutting them or attacking all legal targets with a +2 bonus. The top end effects grant +100 damage to a single strike. My guess is the 4E Fighter will tend toward these, with the more magical effects being reserved for the prestige class equivalents.

It's an incredibly cool expansion, and paves the way for all sorts of different applications when mapped on to other classes. A huge step in the right direction for the new edition, in my opinion.

fixed the thread title

For all intents and purposes, everyone will be a wizard.  Every character will have abilities that they can use at will, some that are limited to uses/encounter, and some that are limited to uses/day.  Be they spells, invocations, manuevers, dirty tricks, they'll all be functionally equal in intent and application and I think we'll see a siginificant change in how the game plays accordingly.

I just think it's funny that Pundit is lambasting a game concept whose most visible proponent in the D&D world is Mike Mearls... a guy for whom Pundit otherwise exhibits shameless sweaty man-love.  With this, the crime of announcing 4e and Dancey's conversion to storytelling games, the tune of the week in Punditland is "The World Turned Upside Down."



KoOS

Sounds like Wizards are trying to appeal to the Exalted crowd. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Tyberious FunkSounds like Wizards are trying to appeal to the Exalted crowd. :rolleyes:

By making the classes that traditionally get left behind at higher levels more competitive?

I think you're reading way to much into this. High level fighters doing massive amounts of damage is no more an appeal to Exalted fandom than high level wizards blasting cities to rubble. D&D has always had an epic scope, this is more about keeping the archetypes balanced and interesting than emulating another system's conceits for the sake of appeasing a significantly smaller customer base.

And I say that as someone who enjoys the Exalted setting (if not the ruleset).

Actually, this leads down the line of them trying to appeal to the "cinematic" feel, where cinematic equals asin influences.  People have talked about it here and elsewhere that Anime is the big influence - if for no other reason then this is what the upcoming and just arrived gamer cut their teeth on (Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, whatever).

My proof? Quote from the Book of Nine Swords:

QuoteIf you've ever played a ninja or samurai - or for that matter a monk - amid a group of "standard" D&D heroes, then this book is for you. Thanks to the influence of Japanese anime, Hong Kong action movies, and popular video games, the notion of a fantasy setting has grown very broad in the last few years.

Note the influences of the book that is influencing 4e - Mike Mearls led, btw. And, I'm sorry, the notion of a fantasy setting hasn't changed for many of us. to continue:

QuoteFantasy gaming isn't just about knights and castles and dragons anymore.

• Perhaps not for some.  But for many of us, it remains along those line.
• Talk about the excluded middle! You're either only about those old stinky dragons and knights, or these really cool aisian influenced elements.

QuoteFantasy gaming isn't just about knights and castles and dragons anymore. Ninjas and samurai, ronin and shugenja, yazuka and monks - all these and more have gradually filtered into people's expectations for a fantasy world.

No, what's happened is that these are the expectations of the younger crowd of gamers who grew up with these influences.  For those of us old folks, not so much. Hell, I can't tell you what half of those terms are, much less expect them in my game.

I get it.  They want the younger demographic.  I should have listened when, a little while ago, people were saying that anime would be the next big influence on D&D.  They were right.  I'm a grognard who thinks of Tolkien when fantasy settings come up, not AKira.  And I'm now on the outside of WotC marketing looking in. This is what it feels like to get old.

QuoteTome of Battle isn't your parents D&D - it's bigger, bolder and even more fantastic than ever before.

Well, I'm your parent.  So I can assume 4e is not my D&D. It's nice of them to say it outright.

I'm really truly thinking of piling up the 3.5 books (buying everything in sight in a wild spreee), putting them on my shelf next to my 1st and 2nd edition stuff, and join the OOP D&D gamer crowd. Talk me down from the ledge, won't you?

There´s a lot in Bo9S that lends itself perfectly to old-school aesthetics.

Warblades should better be called Myrmidons, and they are the best Sword & Boarders that you´ll ever meet in 3.5. Nu Wuxia with the Warblade-schools.
If it´s modern, it´s way more like 300 than Jet Li-Flics.

Exalted was the first thing that came to my mind also.

Why beat around the bush? 4E takes the Exalted-ization of D&D to the next level. You may either like that or not, but you might as well acknowledge the bald fact.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityExalted was the first thing that came to my mind also.

Why beat around the bush? 4E takes the Exalted-ization of D&D to the next level. You may either like that or not, but you might as well acknowledge the bald fact.

See I thought of WoW and the other MMO influences, because in those games, each class has its own set of special abilities.

What´s really getting on my nerves is the "monster roles". It might be the last small step moving the experience from "experiential" to ...I dunno, nothing I care for in any case.

I don´t like fighting mooks. Mooks destroy my gaming fun.

Either they are what they are because they are what they are, or I´m out.

As a DM, I might switch to 4th, because I can re-strategize it as much as I want, just as I did succesfully with 3.5.

But I´m already pissed at zero strategic play, reactive tactics and encounters in which I´m doing just as good as the designers want me to do. (Savage Tide: Boooooh! Eyes of the Lich Queen: Booooh)

No, I´m done with overdesigned encounters.
I´m done with the official playstyle of D&D published adventures.

Fortress of Badabaskor etc. emphatically excluded.

Actually, I look at it as the proper evolution of the game.  Essentially, Fighters got the shaft-royale (with cheese) in 3e - by simple oversight, not malicious intent.  It's not so much that the other classes were better in terms of class powers and cool stuff, but rather because the cool stuff that other classes could do turned out to be far more effective than what fighters could do.  This only really sank in after a couple years of powergamers hammering away with their spreadsheets and statistical models calculating the worth of every conceivable option in the game.

I think that they [the designers] simply miscalculated the scope of the effect of changing the scale of combat.  I could be wrong, but this is my theory:

Prior to 3e, a round of combat was 1 minute.  A declaration of "I attack with my sword" meant that the character performed many different thrusts, slashes, and parries during that round.  the concept of individual maneuvers didn't make mechanical sense in that context as it was assumed that there were indeed all sorts of cool things happening with the attack.

In 3e a round is 6 seconds and "I attack with my sword" means something much closer to "I make a single stroke with the blade."  The problem is that the effect is still exactly the same as it was before.  Most other things in the game including spells, powers, and feat effects were built or re-built to account for this new scale but simple attacks were not.

In 4e it now looks like "I attack" will actually mean something in detail, and those details will provide all sorts of little bonuses and stuff in order to better reflect the scale of combat effects.

As has been said many times before: these aren't "magic powers" they're things like detailed maneuvers, surprise and trick attacks, etc...

The only concern I have is that it has the potential to slow combat down even further as we get bogged down by the details.

EDIT: and yeah, I guarantee that Exalted played a huge part in the realization of this gap in 3e's design.

Quote from: James J SkachWell, I'm your parent.  So I can assume 4e is not my D&D. It's nice of them to say it outright.

I'm really truly thinking of piling up the 3.5 books (buying everything in sight in a wild spreee), putting them on my shelf next to my 1st and 2nd edition stuff, and join the OOP D&D gamer crowd. Talk me down from the ledge, won't you?

Dude, I'm 25 and even I think that sounds like asspants.