It's official. D&D 4e is being announced at GenCon this year. http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204119 It will be released May 2008 and no one is sure yet if it will support third party publishing using its system via the Open Game License or not. Hopefully news on that will leak out by the end of GenCon… but maybe they won;t say anything about that for a few months.

Huzcrap! Hasbro!

It seems that in 4e they will really be pushing for internet play. On the whole D&D seems more MMO-like. More magic across the board. The ability to swap in and out different feats and powers between levels. Most resource mnagement is per encounter rather than per day. Encounters and divided into “normal” and “elite.” New racial abilities can be unlocked by raising levels. They're also doing away with skill ranks; now you're either trained in a skill or you aren't. It's a binary distinction.

http://www.enworld.org/

So… it's like WoW in P&P format in the D&D universe. That's a lot of acronyms to keep track of.

Also classes run from level 1 - 30 now.

Whoa. Weird.

D&D 4e is doing away with the Bard, the Barbarian, the Druid and the Monk. They're adding a new base class called the warlord. They're doing away with the Gnome in the base book and adding the Tiefling into the Players Handbook.

Getting rid of Bard??? Nooooooooooo!!! :shock:


Although I have sorta thought before that the system of magical classes could do to be narrowed down a bit, Bard abilities don't really fit anywhere else. I guess you could cover all the bardic music ablities as spells, but thematically it just wouldn't be the same.
I can see how they might combine Druid into Cleric somehow and put Monk and Barbarian under Fighter though if they made stuff like Animal Companion, Unarmed Fighting, and Raging more feat-ish.

RIP Bards
RIP Barbarians
RIP the only two classes I've really played…

Bards can't really fit anywhere else. They NEED to be their own class.

Barbarians could be a sub-type of fighter. I could see that.

Druids… are a divine version of a mage, basically, so I don't have much problem with that. I mean, they cast divine spells instead of arcane, and they have animal companions instead of familiars. The wildshape is easily just a polymorph spell. Meh.

Warlord? You've got to be kidding me…

Apparently in D&D 4e characters will be afflicted with certain conditions as they lose hit points. For example, at half hit points they are “bloodied” and certain abilities can only be used by or used on “bloodied” characters.

Also, D&D 4e is doing away with save-or-die effects.