Community

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20080104

Thought's anyone?

I, for one, love it! I am implementing ASAP at my gametable.

With the increased hit points there is now the strange factor that a mage can likely shrug off such a blow even if it is a critical without blinking. d8 maximized is still only 8 points of damage and likely less then the predicted minium point for a wizard of 12.

Good points are that you do not have the fairly odd uber bonus specs that were designed around the almost automatic criticals with their multiplying. Multiplying really does put a wrench in the mechanics quickly.

I am curious though what the word 'versatile' means on the war pick next to the high critical? There is also a mark of Proficiency 2 which means?

Could this be a signal that WotC is returning to the 2e and earlier where a fighter did not know all weapons but had to choose which weapons to learn to use? If that is the case then does that 2 mean that it takes the equivelent of 2 choices to learn the weapon because it is marked as being versatile?

Wondering minds want to know.

I like it. It makes my job easier behind the screen and reduces the frequency with which I'm going to need to fudge rolls to keep PCs alive (I have a Warmage who thinks he's a tank, so this happens a lot).

My players are going to have a completely different opinion of it: Longbow crit of 9 (8 +1 enh, no str) is a lot less impressive than 3d8+3 (avg 15), but they'll get used to the idea quickly enough.

The real meaty bits of this article have little to nothing to do with crits at all, however:

-Confimations are gone. I think Logan is right in that most people will welcome this. I know my players will.

-The article seems to support more of the "simplify the math" theme that we've seen running throughout 4e development so far, and simply being able to note down your crit damage on the sheet implies that other situational modifiers to your attacks are gone: things like power attack. I have mixed feelings about this, since I liked being able to adjust that probability round by round and opponent by opponent.

-It's good to see that procs (chance-on-hit abilities for all three of you that don't play MMOs) are still around, and I strongly suspect that triggering these is going to quickly become the real highlight of a critical hit, rather than maximising damage dice.

-The War Pick's weapon profile includes quite a bit of interesting information, as well:

--"Prof"
It appears that the Simple, Martial, Exotic distinction is gone as well, and has been replaced by a numeric system. A War Pick is a relatively easy weapon to use, although some amount of practice is required to get the point into the other guy, so I would guess that the system rates weapons from 1 (very simple; club, dagger) to 4 (stupidly hard; spiked chain, dire flail) and each weapon trainig feat taken increases your proficiency level by 1.

It it also possible that the proficiency level indicates the penalty applied to attack rolls with the weapon if you aren't proficient with it. Therefore, a Wizard (almost certainly a prof. level 1 character) who picks up this pick without prior training is going to take a -2 penalty on attacks with it, where he would be taking a -4 if he tried to do the same with a spiked chain.

--"Category"
This also seems to indicate the death of broader weapon categories in favor of tighter lines, possibly related to damage type or the maneuvers that can be used with given sorts of weapons (ie, a pick is very good at piercing armor or yanking their shield out of the way, where a staff is better at tangling up an opponents legs). This is probably going to be mostly relevant to Fighters, but with the "training" feats, it's possible that everyone couled pick up a trick or two with their weapon of choice.

--"Properties"
I suspect that other things we may see in this caregory are Reach, Double-weapon, and similar things. High Crit gets explained (and though it does not specify, heavily implies that the extra die is rolled rather than maximised). What "versatile" means is anyone's guess at this point, though once again, it could be related to damage types or the specific sorts of attacks/maneuvers that can be used with the weapon.



Overall, most interesting article in a while, and I hope they do more like this in the months leading up to the PHB. One of the dev team said (don't remember who or where, though... might've been Noonan) that they wanted to use these D&D articles to acclimate us to the precepts of 4e so that it felt like we already knew the rules when he opened the book for the first time. I like that idea, and I think it's a good move on their part if only they'd back up their words. This article is a good step in that direction.

So, Logan, if you read this: keep it up. For the DMs and players still out there who are unconvinced, this is exactly what we want to see.