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Rumour has it that the Great Wheel is returning with 5th Edition. Which likely means much of the 4e cosmology is being removed or rethought.

That sounds like a blog topic to me.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Of all the changes that came with 4e, I felt the most torn with the planar restructuring. On the one hand, the planes were a little crazy and busy, with so many overlapping ideas and places with only a single tenuous hook. There were many planes whose sole existence was to serve as a bridge from one interesting location to the other. They needed a change.

On the other hand, the original planes were pure High Gygaxian and contained story hooks and idea that dated back to Jeff Grubb’s first Manual of the Planes back in 1987, or the first Deities & Demigods from 1980-81. A classic part of

One final blog on D&D Next and then I’ll take a break for a few blogs.

One of the big questions regarding 5e is how they core books will be structured: how they’re planning on release an acceptable amount of modularity for the game without releasing massive tomes that dwarf Ptolus or make the Pathfinder core book look like a pamphlet on paper conservation.

Here’s what I’d do if I were in charge planning the books:

The Return of Basic & Advanced!

I’d start with Basic Edition. Now, hear me out, put down the pitchforks and hold back on the comments crying “we don’t need two product lines again!!” One of the problems D&D has is that it’s a giant big book that’s inaccessible to new players, or rather three giant books that are fairly

4e has been around almost four years. Less than half the lifespan of 3e. And some people already feel the edition has run out of steam.

The edition does feel bloated. The metric ton of crunch from monthly books of pure mechanics certainly didn’t help. It gives the impression of a dense game, because the edition was so front-loaded. There’s so many options, it’s hard to think of new content that isn’t superfluous or threatens to add even more character options to an edition that already has more spells and feats than 3e.

However, much of the edition has only barely been touched. The entire Epic tier hasn’t seen much attention, especially for DMs. And while the crunch aspect of the game has been prematurely exhausted, there are vast areas of the system that

The final third of an adventurer’s career is spent in the Epic tier, performing fifteen impossible things each morning followed by a late lunch at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

My last two blogs detailed the Heroic and Paragon tiers: the former is when the PCs are local heroes saving towns , rescuing innocent villagers, and stopping raiders, while the latter is when the PCs are national champions saving countries, rescuing princess, and stopping wars. This blog, of course, is on the final tier.

What Epic is NOT

I’d like to start by saying that level 20 in 1e-3e is NOT the same as level 30 in 4e. The big, scary CR 19 monster in 3e does not update into a level 28 or 29 monster. Personally, I saw this alot in the Ravenloft fan-community, as the licensed 3rd Edition