This IS The Thread You're Looking For: First Look At 4E Quickplay!

[tsuyoshikentsu]

Reading through right now.  Notes will come as I go.

Actions -- AoOs have been turned into an entire action.  Everyone gets one per everyone ELSE'S turn, according to my reading.  (IE, A, B, C, and D are in combat; A gets an Opportunity Action on B, C, And D's turn.)  Immediates have been split into Interrupts (interrupts and action) and response (responds to a resolved action), hich is nice because it clarifies the timing of an effect.  Too many actions now, though.

We get an upkeep at the beginning of our turns.  Interestingly, you can't spend actions there -- this may or may not include immediates.

You CAN trade down standard and move to minor, a la Galaxies.

Huh, another upkeep at end of turn.

It's amazing how much of this we already know.

Bull rushing... is relegated to powers now.  The "forced movement" rules are interesting.  Probably the most relevant part is that forced movement does NOT provoke AoOs.

Ah, we get to the character sheets.  Interesting tidbit here wit profound effect.  The dwarf fighter has a Maul that deals 2d6 damage.  This tells us that some weapons will now equal the might of the greatsword.. but it's going to be pretty awesome when I'm Crushing Blow-ing (level 3 power, encounter, 4W damage) for 8d6 plus mods.  Especially since damage boosters are so hard to come by now.  We also have an at-will power that deals damage even on a miss, which is nice.  Tripping is now also power territory, an the dwarf Fighter gets a level 1 Encounter power to do it.

UGH! Power attack is now FIXED!  -2 to attack, +3 to damage.  Still, in an environment where practically everything gets a huge to-hit bonus, it's not bad at all.  There's also a leel 2 daily power for the Fighter that heals.

Interesting!  Rogue now has a LOT of battlefield control options; almost every power involves either the Rogue moving before attacking or moving the OPPONENT!  The level 1 daily is kind of insane; after a successful hit, you can move an opponent 1 square.  Oh, and apparently enemies are only flat-footed (sorry, combat advantage) against Rogues if they haven't acted yet.  Everyone else is fine.

Woah, woah, woah.  Sneak Attack has two big changes.  One, it's once per round.  (Big deal; no more full attacks.)  Two?  At elvel one, it's +2d6, with a feat to increase that to d8s!

Wizard looks pretty much like a bad blaster mage.  Ugh.  Warlock wil lbe better, from what I saw at hte local demo.  Paladin looks like a crusader, CLeric looks like a wannabe Crusader.

More in-depth when I'm not this tired.

[Squirrelloid]

Wait, are you sure that's 4E and not Magic the Gathering?

[Stratovarius]

Wait, are you sure that's 4E and not Magic the Gathering?

Close to the same response here. Upkeep?

[Runestar]

We are not going to get the same fiasco where we can take actions right after our turn ends, but just before the next turn begins, are we?

That said, seen any interesting multiclass combinations yet?

[phelanarcetus]

I'm curious about the power attack, especially as these are slightly trimmed down entries.  It might be more flexible, or it might not.  Given that they don't want you one-shotting the boss with a daily power plus a big power attack... maybe not.

I did find out that the paladin's At-Will Lay on Hands with Special "One / Day" is actually Wisdom / day usages.

Flanking and such is combat advantage as well.  Prone, all sorts of things have been rolled into that.

If I recall correctly on the upkeeps, at the beginning of your turn you suffer from ongoing damage and similar.  At the end, you roll saves to end the ongoing damage.  Most effects have a duration of the rest of the encounter or of "until the end of your next turn".  No actions during those upkeeps... unless there are special powers that can be used there, I assume some of the immediate action ones can be.

Multi-classing is rather limited; you are a fighter from level 1 to level 30.  There's a paragon path and epic destiny, you can take part of another base class instead of the paragon path (gaining powers from that class instead of from a paragon path), and there's a set of four feats you can use to pick up some of the capabilities of one other class.  Feat #1 gets you an additional trained skill and a pre-selected power.  Feats #2-4 can't be taken quite as early, but allow you to know a power of your choice from the second class instead of a power from your primary class.

[ninjarabbit]

LOL it does sound like MtG, I wonder if I'll have to buy booster packs for my character

[Runestar]

The fixed power attack change seems in line with an earlier treatise on the designers disliking how power attack was turning out to be a mathematical nightmare, completely incompatible with the "mindless frenzy" flavour they wanted to emulate. Now there is no more debating over the "optimal" amount you should PA for or referencing complex spreadsheets, it is "either you do or you don't".

LOL it does sound like MtG, I wonder if I'll have to buy booster packs for my character

You don't really think they are going to stop publishing splatbooks, do you? :wink

[Rymosrac]

Still really not sure what to make of all this. In 3.5, the effectiveness of an optimized character compared to a junkheap was astronomical. Now. . . Seems like there'll be less room to maneuver. Not sure yet if that's a good thing or not. Judgment reserved until I've got the books in my hands.

[phelanarcetus]

The fixed power attack change seems in line with an earlier treatise on the designers disliking how power attack was turning out to be a mathematical nightmare, completely incompatible with the "mindless frenzy" flavour they wanted to emulate. Now there is no more debating over the "optimal" amount you should PA for or referencing complex spreadsheets, it is "either you do or you don't".

I'm actually writing myself a little power attack calculator (not that I haven't before) as a way to learn Objective-C.  Seems every time I blink I find another feature it needs.  Each attack needs to have its own damage, crit range, crit multiplier, PA multiplier.  I haven't factored in bonus damage at all, and that needs to be handled differently when crits come into play.  In actuality, most of the underlying code is simple, but the interface becomes a nightmare.  For each of N attacks I want to know:
- Attack Bonus
- Expected weapon damage (eventually I'll take the dice and calculate this)
- Crit range (in form of lowest d20 that's a threat)
- Crit multiplier
- Power Attack Multiplier (and I just realized I need to change the data type)
- Bonus damage on hit
- Bonus damage on crit

As well as the more global BAB value, target AC range, and target DR.  And look, I'm still leaving it to the user to filter out the effect of his flaming weapon on a creature with fire resistance, or handle flaming burst in that case, and so on.

That's a lot of inputs.

Sure, calculators exist, but finding one that suits me won't help me learn the language.

[Sunic_Flames]

Sounds like 4.0 rolled a natural 1 with critical fumble houserules. Oh well, 3.5 for the win.

[phelanarcetus]

Just in case it was unclear; that power attack calculator is 3.5, plus some houserules.

[Pan-Fried Hamster]

Wait, what's this about "Wizard = bad blaster"?  Oh dear.  That doesn't sound good at all.

[phelanarcetus]

Since 4th edition is, essentially, dropping the Save or Die type spells, and non-combat spells are being moved to rituals (and in some cases, skill usage, like Identify), that primarily leaves damage-dealing spells.

The wizard, being the only class in the PHB that fills the so-called Controller role, seems to focus on handling multiple opponents.  Based on the spells I've seen, that mostly means area-effect damage, with some area-effect status debuffs (though status debuffs don't reach the same level of power as they do in 3.5).  Most of the spells shown so far are damage-dealing, but that doesn't necessarily mean the mix is extremely heavily weighted in favor of damage spells.  I suspect, however, that it is.

There will not be spells which can be paraphrased as "If you hit the target, it is out of this fight."  A paralysis effect has a saving throw every round (with about a 50% chance of breaking out), and if there's a spell that turns the target to stone, it will take multiple rounds, with multiple saves, to actually eliminate the target.

[MittenNinja]

Since 4th edition is, essentially, dropping the Save or Die type spells, and non-combat spells are being moved to rituals (and in some cases, skill usage, like Identify), that primarily leaves damage-dealing spells.

The wizard, being the only class in the PHB that fills the so-called Controller role, seems to focus on handling multiple opponents.  Based on the spells I've seen, that mostly means area-effect damage, with some area-effect status debuffs (though status debuffs don't reach the same level of power as they do in 3.5).  Most of the spells shown so far are damage-dealing, but that doesn't necessarily mean the mix is extremely heavily weighted in favor of damage spells.  I suspect, however, that it is.

There will not be spells which can be paraphrased as "If you hit the target, it is out of this fight."  A paralysis effect has a saving throw every round (with about a 50% chance of breaking out), and if there's a spell that turns the target to stone, it will take multiple rounds, with multiple saves, to actually eliminate the target.

While it does seem like the wizard has been taken down a notch from 3.5e, I don't see that as a bad thing. Considering that the Wizard in 3.5e completely outclassed almost everything else, it makes sense that it's power is dropped a little to make it more balanced with other classes.

[limes superior]

Wizard looks pretty much like a bad blaster mage.

I hope to find that WotCs definition for a "controller" is not for a character that hurts many opponents but for a real bc mage (GOD). We will see what powers/spells will be available for a wizard with the PHB. I am not sure if real bc is still possible for 4th edition because effects might only work till a DC 10 save. So the expected value for a save ends power are ~1.5 turns 

limsup

[Pan-Fried Hamster]

It's not that I want to steamroll everything, but to me the FUN of the Wizard is being able to do more than just, say, hurl a fireball.  I like making the floor into mud, reversing gravity, opening planar rifts, because it's so much more interesting than hitting things with a big pointy stick.  I don't want to see the class boiled down to "an archer who shoots pew pew lazers"

[cdrcjsn]

Bull rushing... is relegated to powers now.  The "forced movement" rules are interesting.  Probably the most relevant part is that forced movement does NOT provoke AoOs.

A Bullrush can be attempted by anyone.  It's not just a power.  It was left out of the quick start rules though.  This was revealed by Mearls, one of the designers over at enworld.org.

[cdrcjsn]

Still really not sure what to make of all this. In 3.5, the effectiveness of an optimized character compared to a junkheap was astronomical. Now. . . Seems like there'll be less room to maneuver. Not sure yet if that's a good thing or not. Judgment reserved until I've got the books in my hands.

It will now take as much effort to create a craptastic build as it does an optimal one.  You can make an effective character by simply following the suggested sample build, even if you do nothing with your feats than skill focus:whatever.  An optimized character can no longer end an encounter by himself.

But that doesn't mean you cannot still make an optimal build.

When I was playtesting, our Paragon level Thief was doing about 30pts of damage a hit, and was only applying sneak attack in about half his attacks. In comparison, when I created a 1st level Thief, I was doing about 25 points average on a hit and was able to get sneak attack on almost all of my attacks by effective positioning (i.e. using stealth during combat rather than just relying on flanks).  Similarly, when I built a warlock, I showed how to do twice the average damage our party's warlock was doing with nothing more than at-wills and encounter powers, as well as maintaining high defenses through use of item and class abilities that our previous warlock didn't take advantage of.

I've already run a few 4e games with the DDXP pregen characters.  I've noticed that the ability of the Player to maximize his actions per turn will be very important.  If in 3e you are used to multiple actions per turn (free, swift, immediate, etc) then you will prosper in 4e.  The people I saw as not reaching their character's full potential were the ones not spending all their move and minor actions, spending their actions points or realizing that they have several immediate action powers.

[tsuyoshikentsu]

If I recall correctly on the upkeeps, at the beginning of your turn you suffer from ongoing damage and similar.  At the end, you roll saves to end the ongoing damage.  Most effects have a duration of the rest of the encounter or of "until the end of your next turn".  No actions during those upkeeps... unless there are special powers that can be used there, I assume some of the immediate action ones can be.

These are the upkeeps I meant.

LOL it does sound like MtG, I wonder if I'll have to buy booster packs for my character

True story: for 3.0, they were considering having feats on cards to go in booster packs.

Still really not sure what to make of all this. In 3.5, the effectiveness of an optimized character compared to a junkheap was astronomical. Now. . . Seems like there'll be less room to maneuver.

STAY ON TARGET.

The wizard, being the only class in the PHB that fills the so-called Controller role, seems to focus on handling multiple opponents.  Based on the spells I've seen, that mostly means area-effect damage, with some area-effect status debuffs (though status debuffs don't reach the same level of power as they do in 3.5).  Most of the spells shown so far are damage-dealing, but that doesn't necessarily mean the mix is extremely heavily weighted in favor of damage spells.  I suspect, however, that it is.

Besides cantrips, I've seen one that isn't so far.  And it's a daily.

Rogues look like the new BC specialists, which makes all kinds of no sense.

[Pan-Fried Hamster]

If I don't get fun fun Silent Image shenanigans, I am going to be one sad hamster.