Insert Fanboy Whining Here.

[featherynscale]

Soooo.... D&D 4th edition. triadruid asked me this morning, "So they said they'd make it simpler than 3.x. How much simpler could they possibly make it?". I couldn't let it rest, I had to find out.

As it turns out, in the Brave New World, apparently, one's choices of character class will be limited to four, with variants: a tank sort, a healing sort, a ranged weapons sort, and magic-using sort. Apparently, if you would like to know more, you could watch this video. (Disclaimer: I haven't done so yet, but will probably check it out later. I took the above assessment from the general feeling of the D&D board at wizards.com, which one has to subscribe to a service for now... when did that happen?)

Anyway. I don't imagine we'll convert any time soon. Aside from the general ...meh... factor, I own too many 3.x books.

And all of this doesn't answer the most burning D&D question currently on my mind: Why the hell do rangers even get spells? Where does their magic come from? (In most campaign settings, this probably wouldn't make a bit of difference, but in mine it will. Feh. Why can't we just build a medieval-fantasy-britain-world with wizards and dragons and nobody asks why anything exists in the way it does? You know, like everyone else does.)

Comments

[liquidfun.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how reliable the information is, but I've heard through the 'net that they are going to a more World of Warcraft model for revenue ... a pay-by-the-month service with online character creation as well as online mapping, etc. No idea if those are "optional" features or if the new system will more-or-less depend on them.

Another of the big changes in the class "simplification" is the elimination of prestige classes and feats, replacing them with a talent tree (again similar to World of Warcraft). I may like this idea, I know I loved the skill tree in the first version of Paranoia and was sorry to see they removed it in later editions (apparently it was too hard for people to understand).

One of these days I'll have to do some reading on my own to see if that information is accurate.

[capriciouslass.livejournal.com]

Yes, but when I GM Paranoia, the skill tree is still used. I just convert any later edition modules to use the old skills.
But then again, I make it up as I go along anyway...