More on D&D 4th Ed: I may have to start collecting heads

[eric_hinkle]

Some more news on the new edition of D&D: It's coming out starting next summer, and among other things, it'll be miniatures-heavy, the old 'Vancian'* magic system will be gone, and if you've ever seen a 3.5 book titled BOOK OF NINE SWORDS**, that'll give you an idea of the intended direction

Comments

[jordangreywolf]

Well, I was never fond of "cast and forget" wizard-style magic. I preferred the system used by sorcerers and bards - where you'd have a set of spells in your repertoire, and you choose on the fly how you spend your "slots" per the day.

My preferred setup would be some sort of "mana point" system, where you just have a pool of power, and if you want to belt out the really big and fantastic spells - fine - but you'll be wearing yourself out quickly. (In such a system, if there are various spells that are merely "improved" versions of lower-level/lower-point spells, I think the "lesser" versions should be prerequisites for learning the higher-powered ones. Otherwise, if you start a campaign with mid-level characters, they could well be disproportionately more powerful than the low-level ones if they strategically select only those spells that give the most bang for the buck ... or mana point

[eric_hinkle]

Something else about the new system: apparently you'll have to get a subscription to the WotC website for extra information needed to play the game.

If true, that royally cheeses me off.

[jordangreywolf]

Er ... that's sounding like it has to be out of context. That would seem to mean that unless you have an internet connection, you can't play this pen-and-paper game, and that's kind of hard to imagine. Where did you hear that one?

[eric_hinkle]

Both at online sites like Candlekeep and the Wizards forums, and from folks who were at GenCon.

The latter also told me that at the speech introing 4th Ed. D&D, they spoke repeatedly of miniatures and computers, but said not one word about role-playing.