D&D 4E 4E in 2008? Fact or Fiction?

[Pants]

I also think they were right to release it soon. The combat chapter in the PH alone needed to be translated into english.

Totally agree. Once I got the 3.5 PHB and reread the combat chapter, AoO's finally made sense. The most obvious other stuff that needed to be fixed was the ranger and the bard.

 

[Ranger REG]

I think the likelihood of a complete overhaul for 4e is very unlikely.

3e needed a big overhaul because the evolution of RPGs (and D&D in particular) had been towards more (modular) options, something that the 1e structure didn't support well at all.

4e will change some of the details, but I can't see the structure changing much at all.

IOW, like 2e, it's a refinement of the previous odd-numbered edition, not that I see a pattern forming.

 

[Testament]

...Of course, once the Player's Option books came out, if you used them you were playing in a different edition, anyway! The Player's Option books, although eventually failing in several areas, do pull together the scattered threads of options that had been developed during the first five years of 2e. D&D had progressed from a game of limited player choices in the method of approach to one of a myriad of available choices.

Pity that the game was now the plaything of min/maxers, powergamers and rules lawyers.

I know that there's a lot of people who'd say the same thing about the current edition and the Complete X line of books. Nevermind the racial books.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I know that there's a lot of people who'd say the same thing about the current edition and the Complete X line of books. Nevermind the racial books.

I don't really see those as comperable. The Complete X and Races of Y books add new feats, new classes, new options, etc. But they don't offer fundamental rules changes. The Players Option books did just that, with everything from new combat rules to new atributes and abilities. It really is a whole different order of magnitude.

 

[fanboy2000]

If they are thinking about a 4e in any manner, then it is likely to be in development at some level.

In my earlier post, I should have said development, not planned. I disagree with the assertion that planning something means actual development. Big corperatins plan lots of things that never see delvopment.

Anyways, a few days ago, I had a big post planned and I re-read Monte Cook's review of 3.5 because there he states that the business team had planned 3.5 from the start. I was going to agree with you about the plan part and make the point I just made above, but something happened while I was reading the review, I got angry with it. Spicificly, I started getting angry when Monte addressed a couple of disclamers:

While it's true that I worked on 3.0 and am very proud of it, there's a much larger, more realistic bias going on that you might not have considered. I am very much attached to D&D, in whatever form it takes -- not only as a gamer, but as a publisher. If I'm going to make a living producing books that support D&D, I need for D&D to be good. In fact, a part of me is saying, "Shut up and pretend it's all golden so people will buy it and keep playing." That would be a deep dishonesty, however. I do hope that people keep playing the game, and, in fact, I hope 3.5 does well, for Wizards of the Coast's well being (both for my friends there and for D&D's sake).

Monte himself ignored a larger bias on his part. See, as a lead designer on 3e, he doesn't need a revision of the rules. Most of the content in the revised books isn't new material, it's a revision of the existing material so beginning gamers and DMs with little time can make the most use of the material. What is new material Monte either didn't mind the old version, or he could come-up with his own fix. Heck, he could even legally publish his fixes. Oh wait, he did.

So many of the important revisions simply aren't of any use to someone who worked on the original document.

• He didn't need a revised combat chapter, he understands 3e combat better than I ever will.
• He didn't need class revisions, he could write his own.
• He didn't need the monster breakdowns at the end of many of the entries, he doesn't need to reverse engineer the monsters in the MM. As someone who was new to RPGs when 3e came out, I struggled to add class levels to monsters where I had to reverse engineer the stats. I can't believe he didn't see the usefulness of that addition. He saw the reduced usefulness in the NPC tables, but not the increased usefulness of the MM entries. This brings me to...
• He doesn't need the level adjustment entry in the MM, he can assign his own.
• He doesn't need the skills re-organized because he already understood them. For those of us who struggled with the odder skills (like intuit direction), it was a godsend.

The combat chapter in the revised PHB has a great example of what I'm talking about:

If a spell's normal casting time is 1 standard action, casting a metamagic version of the spell is a full-round action for a sorcerer or bard. Note that this isn't the same as a spell with a 1-round casting time--the spell takes effect in the same round that you begin casting, and you aren't required to continue the invocation, gestures, and concentration until your next turn.

I don't know if the sentence I bolded was a new rule for 3.5 or a clarification of the rule in 3.0, but I needed that sentence. It made metamagic feats playable for sorcerers. I doubt Monte even sees how must that changed things for my game. Those sentences scattered around the three books made the whole $90 price tag worth it to me.