4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080421a

Today we get a preview of the 4e Warlord class from the Player’s Handbook.

we felt that 4th Edition should introduce one or two classes that weren’t previously part of the core D&D experience.

This gives us an answer as to why the Warlord is present in the PHB.

The 4E warlord now helps alleviate that unfortunate requirement of party composition in all previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons: before, a party had to include a cleric in order to be effective. Very early on in 4th Edition design, our work on character roles led us to the idea that any character serving as the party’s “cleric”—whether a bard, shaman, warlord, or whatever—needed to be as good at that job as the cleric or else we’d have yet another edition of D&D in which every party still needed a cleric. That led us to the idea of the Leader role, and the warlord as just one of several possible classes that can fill this role. Of course, the warlord fills it in his own unique way, with powers that have a strong flavor of clever tactics and heroic inspiration.

This is uplifting to me, as I personally hate it when our group goes through the typical...who is gonna be the cleric/rogue/whatever this time. It sounds as though the only thing “required” will be one of each role. This is a lot easier to be able to have a group (at least my group) fill.

Warlord Overview

Characteristics: You are a strong warrior in melee, able to stand beside the fighter or paladin in your party. Your powers grant allies immediate actions (usually moves or attacks), provide bonuses to attack or defense, and grant healing in the midst of battle.

Religion: Warlords favor martial gods such as Bahamut and Kord, and those who have a particular eye for strategy or leadership esteem Ioun or Erathis. Evil and unaligned warlords often worship Bane.

Races: Dragonborn make excellent inspiring warlords, and half-elves are equally inspiring leaders. Eladrin are skilled tactical warlords. Tiefling warlords are versatile, combining powers from both builds, and humans can excel at either path.

The Warlord description seems to be on par with what most have been thinking.

Armor Proficiencies: Cloth, leather, hide, chainmail; light shield
Weapon Proficiencies: Simple melee, military melee, simple ranged
Bonus to Defense: +1 Fortitude, +1 Will

I would have expected the armor proficiency to be heavier, but I guess that would be more medieval in flavor like they said they don’t want this to have to be.

Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score
Hit Points per Level Gained: 5
Healing Surges per Day: 7 + Constitution modifier

On par with the Cleric according to last weeks excerpt...which is fitting since the class fills the same role.

All warlords have these class features.

Combat Leader
You and each ally within 10 squares who can see and hear you gain a +2 power bonus to initiative.

Seems nifty.

Commanding Presence
Choose one of the following two benefits.

Inspiring Presence: When an ally who can see you spends an action point to take an extra action, that ally also regains lost hit points equal to one-half your level + your Charisma modifier.

Tactical Presence: When an ally you can see spends an action point to make an extra attack, the ally gains a bonus to the attack roll equal to one-half your Intelligence modifier.

The choice you make also provides bonuses to certain warlord powers. Individual powers detail the effects (if any) your Commanding Presence selection has on them.

This is similar in makeup to that of other classes (like the Rogue that gets things based on the flavor of sneak attack/etc. that they go with). Both options seems to be pretty beneficial in their own right.

Guarding Attack Warlord Attack 1
With a calculated strike, you knock your adversary off balance and grant your comrade-in-arms some protection against the villain’s attacks.

Encounter Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC

Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier damage. Until the end of your next turn, one ally adjacent to either you or the target gains a +2 power bonus to AC against the target’s attacks.

Inspiring Presence: The power bonus to AC equals 1 + your Charisma modifier.

Seems pretty basic to this class for an encounter power and the extra AC for picking the right presence is nice.

Warlord’s Favor Warlord Attack 1
With a calculated blow, you leave your adversary exposed to an imminent attack from one of your closest allies.

Encounter Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC

Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier damage. One ally within 5 squares of you gains a +2 power bonus to attack rolls against the target until the end of your next turn.

Tactical Presence: The bonus to attack rolls that you grant equals 1 + your Intelligence modifier.

The other Commanding Presence option gives some decent offensive options.

The daily artwork is interesting as well. The facial expressions of the far left and far right monsters are off a little, but not too bad. I think the images being posted are just another positive for 4e vs other editions.

04/21: Efreet
Art by Eric Vedder and Adam Vehige
Efreets are crafty conjurers of fire native to the Elemental Chaos.

EN World is discussing the excerpt here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=224350&page=1

One thing of note from that thread is that they pulled the previous Warlord sneak peak and compiled this:

So so far, we know the Warlord has the following power choices at 1st level.

AT-WILL POWERS
Commander’s Strike
Furious Smash
Viper’s Strike
Wolf Pack Tactics

ENCOUNTER POWERS
Guarding Attack
Warlord’s Favor

DAILY POWERS
Bastion of Defense
Lead the Attack
Pin the For
White Raven Onslaught

I wonder how many more choices are available at 1st level?

I am really liking the “paths” way they are doing the powers so you have builds that are viable if you roll suckey and only have 1 of your 2ndary scores that is high.  All in all I am generally “meh” on the warlord class, but this preview has made me want to try one out, jst to see.

Paragon Paths info up today:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080423a

Some of it looks REALLY cool, esp some of the paragon feats, I think you can trade 1 heroic feat for a paragon feat each level, so there are some pretty cool combos I see like Danger Sense, which lets you roll twice for init, and Seize the moment that gives you combat advantage over a foe that goes after you.

I am digging today’s art as well.

If I am not mistaken the Raksasha’s hands are upside down right?  They are supposed to be, that would explain why his arms look funny.

I had an issue in that I have always pictured Rakshasa’s as tigers and exclusively tigers.  The art is awesome, but I have a fundamental issue with the panther in place of a tiger.  This is stupid preconception since in Hindu lore they don’t have a set form, but I guess I’ve just been warped in that direction.

And for the paths - I really have to read through the rules about these.  I really, really liked PrC’s as ways to break characters outside of set classes.  It’s the one thing I really wanted to see in a 4th edition - a breaking out from traditional classes so that character “multi-classing” was more fluid.  It doesn’t look like 4E went that way at all (indeed, it feels almost the opposite) and this is one of the biggest hangups I have with 4E.

I never had any particular preference as far as the type of cat the Raksasha’a were, but then about I never really used them in my campaign so I have not experience with them other than as a critter in the MM.  The thing I really liked about the art was the fact that it’s armor is more traditional than I am used to seeing since 3 came out.  It looks like a regular chain shirt, with not “dungeon punk” add-ons.

And for the paths - I really have to read through the rules about these.  I really, really liked PrC’s as ways to break characters outside of set classes.  It’s the one thing I really wanted to see in a 4th edition - a breaking out from traditional classes so that character “multi-classing” was more fluid.  It doesn’t look like 4E went that way at all (indeed, it feels almost the opposite) and this is one of the biggest hangups I have with 4E.

I think that whether or not your hope is fulfilled will depend on whether all paragon paths have a particular class as a prerequisite (as the ones previewed today do).  If they do, then paragon paths are probably going to be mostly a way to specialize in a particular aspect of your class role.  If, on the other hand, some paragon paths don’t have a particular class as a prerequisite, then they’ll be a very good way of representing what you want.

Indeed, that might be something worth designing as homebrew rules if it’s not in the PHB.

Black Plauge - 23 April 2008 07:24 AM

Indeed, that might be something worth designing as homebrew rules if it’s not in the PHB.

Excellent point.  And that’s why I said I’d need the full rules before making that determination.

From what I have heard from WotC not all paths will have class prereqs.  But reguardless it seems that WotC is just renaming the PrCs into “Paths”.  One good (depending on your view) of paths is that it would seem that you are restricted to taking 1 paragon and 1 epic, or at the very least since powers are given out according to total level (ie level 13 as opposed to paragon path lvl 3) dipping is going to be harder.

I personally like this, but can see why others would not.

Just visited ENWorld and saw this post by Michele Carter which answers some of my questions. 

1) There are over 30 paragon paths in the PH.

2) My paladin took a multiclass cleric feat so she could qualify for a cleric paragon path.

I still see the class system as limiting in ways even the PrC’s were not.  I suppose I’ll get over it and use JK’s system if I really want to move beyond classes.

SuperJosh - 23 April 2008 07:37 AM

From what I have heard from WotC not all paths will have class prereqs.  But reguardless it seems that WotC is just renaming the PrCs into “Paths”.  One good (depending on your view) of paths is that it would seem that you are restricted to taking 1 paragon and 1 epic, or at the very least since powers are given out according to total level (ie level 13 as opposed to paragon path lvl 3) dipping is going to be harder.

I personally like this, but can see why others would not.

Yeah no more dipping. You pick one Paragon Path and thats it. I like that, and I also like that the Paragon path is an add-on to your base class. I don’t have to give up my base class anymore.

Here is the latest preview.

This time we get a more in depth look at powers and also advice on managing them.

We get some Gnome love in the art department as well.

I will try and edit to make this more in depth later.

Hmm well I read the article, not much crunch there, and honestly not much we did not already know from the DDX, or could not have gathered from numerous other articles already polsted.

All in all it felt like a “throw away” article, and to be honest that does not bother me that much.  Not every article can be earth shattering, htey gave us 4-5 great articles, it was time for a filler.

That was actually my exact feeling last night when I read it.  I actually stayed up to midnight to read it, hoping it might be something interesting, and it failed completely.

The artwork, however, I thought was incredible.  I love me some gnomes and was more than a little peeved to learn that they wouldn’t be in the PHB.

I agree I was upset that gnomes would not be in the PHB as one of my favorite parties of all times was all gnome.  An Illusionist, Cleric, and Fighter.  Good times.

However from what I am hearing they will be in the MM along with stats to make them a playable race, so you will get a little gnome love.  I am more upset about the lack of 1/2 orcs.  For some reason they were my favorite race in 3.5.

Of the two, I’d prefer half-orcs were dropped.  I was somewhat of an objectionist when it came to including them in 3E.  I didn’t think half-orc deserved to be a player race set in the PHB.  It’s a great background story and makes sense to put as a playable race in the MM, but I just didn’t think they deserved to be an entry on their own.  I felt that way about Half-Elves too.

Edit -

Power Cards

One of the best ways to keep track of your powers is with power cards. The D&D Character Record Sheets package contains not only character sheets, but also perforated cards to write your powers (and magic items) on. These cards contain spaces for all the important info. Here’s a playtest version of what the cards looked like; it’s what I’ve been using for awhile now. Although this is more of a work in progress, it gives you the general idea of how the information is broken out.

The cards have spots for all the information in a power entry, and an “Additional Effects” section at the bottom. In this section, you can include things like the Arcane Reach feat, which lets you fire a close arcane attack from a square other than your own.

Personally, I like to put my cards in sleeves (Magic: the Gathering sleeves are shown in these images) and mark my attack and damage (with critical damage/damage with sneak attack listed separately) with a wet-erase marker. That way, I can update my numbers whenever I need to.

There are a couple ways to keep track of your powers. You can keep your cards in a hand and discard them as you use them. I prefer to set mine up on the table, more like a game of Magic. If I use an encounter power, I flip the card upside-down until the end of the encounter. For a daily power, I flip the card around inside the sleeve so I know it’s expended when I come to the session next week.
--Logan Bonner

That last bit from Logan Bonner chafes for some reason.  Maybe it’s because WotC think they’re doing something new here and that this is a great idea now that they’ve thought of it, but I’ve been doing almost this exact same thing for years.

Edit 2: That character sheet is printed landscape.  The preview character sheets were not.  Do people think the new Character Record sheets will be moving to landscape?