D&D Experience - more 4th Edition previews

Here's a bunch of reports on 4th edition from the recently completed D&D Experience.

D&D XP: Random Crunchy Bits

• James Wyatt: Three monsters in the MM that can be used as PCs: Gnomes, who “hide”, Orcs are strong, and Shadar-Kai who are dexterous, can teleport, and become incorporeal. Players could trade tokens to “unlock” these races for use in the Living Forgotten Realms RPGA campaign. (Here’s the board outside the Delve, but they don’t have stats.)
• Mike Mearls: Minions are destroyed by any hit. Someone did literally one point of damage to a minion zombie and killed it.

D&D Insider with Scott Rouse and Chris Youngs (formerly Chris Thomassen)

All three intrepid EN World correspondents got to chat with WotC staff about D&D Insider and view an early version of the software. The following is from The Universe:
Queen Dopplepopolis/DangerGirl!, Xath and I also got to see a preview of D&D Insider and the new D&D Game Table this weekend at the D&D Experience. We spoke to Chris Youngs (formerly Chris Thomassen), Scott Rouse, and a couple of the software producers working with Wizards, including head producer Didier Monin.

The build we saw was "Pre-Alpha," and represents the current version of the software. Attendees had the opportunity to volunteer for a public beta of the software, and Chris and Didier guessed that the full D&D Insider would launch "close to the launch of 4e." However, they stressed that they wouldn't push the product out "until it's ready," and acknowledged the importance of getting it "right" from moment one.

The character creator was highly reminiscent of a number of MMORPGs, and appeared to be at least as customizable as any I've encountered in that milieau (comparable to City of Heroes, in my opinion). You can adjust characters' height and weight, and "pose" the visiualized character in a number of different ways, and once you've done that, it can act as a 3D digital miniature in the Game Table application. The faces weren't photorealistic, but there were a number of "morphing tools," as well as a skin and hair-color palette that offered a lot of customization choices. They showed off a female face that was at least a little more feminine than some of the pics that have already surfaced on the net. Certainly passable, if not the most beautiful character I've ever seen. Better than some of the really masculine females that have been posted elsewhere online.

We didn't get to see how the character visualizer would interact with the electronic character sheet application that they have planned for the game, but we were assured that they would integrate the two programs in some way. Scott and Chris both intimated that the character sheet program would interact with the rules database that has already been mentioned from the weekend, but details on that front were scarce.

Wizard Spells 10-16 Two Page Spread

Last day of the con had the juiciest PHB spread - wizard spells.

The spread begins with a partial of Level 10 Utility Spells and ends with a partial of Level 16 Utility spells, so there should be more of each of those. Everything else should, I guess, be complete for the levels listed. My picture was cropped in the lower left corner so I missed a single thing - the # of dice Mesmeric Hold does. I'm not uploading all the pictures at this time, just a couple to prevent any accusations.

Click here for the first photo, and here for the second.

Level 10 Utility Spells

Mirror Image Wizard Utility 10
'Three duplicate images of you appear, imitating your actions perfectly and confusing your enemies.'
Daily * Arcane, Illusion
Minor Action Personal
Effect: Three duplicate images of yourself appear in your space, and you gain a +6 power bonus to AC. Each time an attack misses you, one of your duplicate images disap-
pears and the bonus granted by this power decreases by 2. When the bonus reaches 0, all your images are gone and the power ends. Otherwise, the effect lasts for 1 hour.

Resistance Wizard Utility 10
'You make yourself or another creature in range resistant to a particular kind of damage.'Daily * Arcane
Minor Action Ranged 10
Target: You or one creature
Effect: Against a particular damage type chosen by you, the target gains resistance equal to your level + your Intelligence modifier until the end of the encounter or for 5 minutes. Choose the damage type from the following list: acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder.

First (Level) Impressions: D&D 4e

• Combinations and emergent properties. I feel like in 3.x, the powerful combinations came from abusing feat/class combinations, often by ignoring the spirit of the rule. In 4e, the way the different powers in different classes interact gives a good amount of synergy and creates powerful combinations on purpose. As a really minor example, Danny used a power to push a goblin back into a room. This put the goblin within range of the other goblins so that the Wizard could use sleep on all of them. There’s nothing devastating about that combo, but it felt really, really fun, and made me want to seek out more of those situations.
• Durations are so much better now. I’d be willing to bet I haven’t played a game of D&D 3e where someone didn’t ask once per combat, “How many rounds do you think it’s been since I cast this?” Don’t tell me it’s the player’s and DM’s job to keep track… that’s just paperwork, and it’s annoying. Last for the day/for the encounter/until saved/one round is much, much cleaner.
• As far as being like the game that the media portrays it as, D&D is a lot closer now. To explain, if you watch a tv show with an evil wizard, you’ll see him firing energy blasts every round, with heroes ducking behind rocks or deflecting them, or being knocked back. Previously in D&D, that didn’t happen… the wizard would talk about re-memorizing his spells, and warriors would just charge it and start wailing on him. D&D 4e gives that experience for the first time.