I was reading up a bit on the changes in the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons as noted on En World.

And here's some of the more interesting bits:

1. New Class Lists
   3rd Ed Classes: Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin, Monk, Druid, Cleric, Wizard, Sorceror, Bard, Rogue.
   4th Ed Classes: Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Warlord, Wizard, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock.
   
   It makes me wonder if they're trying to be more like World of Warcraft:
   
   World of Warcraft: Warrior, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, Druid.
   
   However, overall, I think this is a good thing. I never felt the Barbarian and Monk classes fit well into the standard D&D settings, plus there's the Barbarian mortality problem (Once you reach level 5, barbarian don't get knocked unconscious they skip straight to dead). Even the druid, bard and sorceror classes seem superfluous, hell they could easily drop the ranger class too without doing any harm to the games most basic aspect: dunegon crawls.



2. Class groups are back
   
   In 3rd Edition, spouting some mumbo-jumbo about class groups being "too confusing" in 2nd Edition, WotC dropped class groups (previously known as Warriors, Rogues, Priests and Wizards) to go with an uncategorized system. Now, they're saying that was a mistake because people weren't building well rounded groups any more. I expect this was particular problematic with the new miniature based rules for combat. Instead of the old standby groups, they made new role based groups that seem very MMO-esque:
   Defenders (Tanks), Leaders (Healers), Controllers (Crowd Control), and Strikers (DPS).
   
   The groups are still fairly analogous to the original groups, but with different names. There's some talk by Blizzard about making the Cleric more fun to play by removing most of the in-combat healing duties from the class. But I'm skeptical about that, healer/tank roles optimize the utility of healing (By reducing the amount of incoming damage you make each hit point worth more, which dramatically increases the value of healing).
   
   
   
   
   • Defender: fighter & paladin classes
   
   
   • Leader: cleric & warlord classes
   
   
   • Controller: wizard class
   
   
   • Striker: rogue, ranger & warlock classes?
   
   
   
   
   It seems odd that there are 3 strikers, but only 1 controller class in the player's handbook.
   
   
3. Now with power sources!
   
   This seems like a page taken from a super heroes game, but each character class will have a "power source". I'm not sure how that works in practice, but the PHB even figures the power sources on the front cover (Arcane, Divine and Martial) for the base PHB.
   
   Of course, this first thing I noticed is that the rogue and ranger are probably both martial striker classes. Nothing else makes sense, without a making either class too radically different from previous interpretations. I would have though the ranger would have been best suited as a nature striker, and would logically appear in the same book as the druid class.
   
   I'm pretty sure WotC received massive complaints last year when it was leaked that rangers wouldn't be in 4th Edition and that explains why they are there despite there be no other logical reason for them.
   
   
4. Good Bye Memorization (and Organization)!
   
   There have been some radical changes to one of the most iconic dnd classes: the Wizard. The old magical system of dnd had wizards memorizing a certain number of spells per day and then using them up during the course of the adventure, 1 cast per spell memorized. That's no longer true. Now instead all characters (wizards included) have abilities that are categorized as "at will", "per encounter" and "per day". For wizards it sounds like they get to choose a certain number of spells for "at will" slots, a certain number for "per encounter" and a few for "per day". There may be limitations on what spells can be loaded into which slots as well.
   
   As a side note, they're limiting the wizard spell list. They're getting rid of schools (a dumb idea, in my humble opinion, categorization is good even for those who don't use the categories). This means even more space in 4th edition books will be wasted with endless spell lists to show who can cast what spells. Anyway, wizards are loosing access to the powerful illusion, necromancy and enchantment spells to make sure there's some uniqueness to the illusionist, necromancer and enchanter specialty classes when WotC gets around to creating them. Frankly, I don't like it. I was a big fan of the generalist mage classes who sacrified an extra spell per level a day for well rounded spell access. The new "wizards" are pretty much evokers who will be throwing frostbolts, fireballs and arcane missiles around. Clearly this is an entirely new idea from WotC and has noting at all do with WoW.
   
   Many "noncombat" spells are no longer castable during combat and are now "rituals". Teleporation being a specific example given.
   
   Warlocks are going to be similar to Wizards except they signed a deal with some force of (probably) evil to master curses and demons. I've never even heard of anything remotely similar. Warlocks will have a telekinesis ability which allows them to push small foes around the battlefield, and will also be able to dimension door (blink) around the battlefield. But the real question is: will they be able to blink uphill? Anyway, finally warlocks have an escape mechanism! Err wait, wrong game? Possibly they will also summon imps named Noknar. We shall see.



5. Races: I welcome our new half-dragon overlords
   Gnomes and Half-Orcs are out of the PHB. Instead we get two different flavours of elves. Elves who are wild woodland guys and Eladrin who are magically delicious. Also all power gamers and munchkins will be playing the new Dragonborn race of humanoid dragons. They are a new race which will probably not appear in 5th edition, due to the inevital backlash against the new abused "cool thing". Halflings are also continuing along their inevitable path to kenderization. Of course it might not be as bad as it seems, because people will also want to jump on the Tiefling and Drow bandwagons too. Tieflings (demonic humans) will be a core PHB race, while drow will be a core Forgotten Realms race.
   
   Overall, WotC says they want racial heritage to play a bigger part in the game, so they're getting rid of racial drawbacks (no more -2 adjustments to stat scores as an example) and adding newer more powerful racial feats. For example dwarves will be able to take a feat that gives them a "third wind" (a second "second wind", which is expected to be a 50% self-heal ability). Also apparently classes will have racial abilities built right into them. That seems to be a potential problem down the road, because for each race they will also need to amend all class descriptions. But then that might be good for WotC, because they plan to sell everyone "DnD Insider" subscriptions, so that they can download the new updated class descriptions anytime they introduce a new class.



6. Multi-class? And risk my spells?

WotC has noticed that few people play multi-classed spell casters anymore, mostly because you sacrifice at lot of power for a little bit of versatility. Supposedly they have a plan to fix this, but they're not telling. I'm a little glad to hear that they've acknowledged the problem and are working on it.


7. Cataclysms abound!

Greyhawk has been dumped as the setting for D&D, mostly because too many Greyhawk specific things made it into the base products and hurt their sales. Forgotten Realms remains the most popular official setting, and the amount of poorly done Greyhawk fluff made generic materials unsuitable for use with the Forgotten Realms. The new campaign setting is called "Points of Light" and is going to avoid campaign setting specific materials as much as possible.

Additionally, the time line in Forgotten Realms has been advanced a century so almost everyone from 2nd edition is dead, plus there's a spell plague that presumably is doing something to wizards. Other campaign settings will probably get a similar treatment. You don't really upgrade to 4th edition. You retire your old characters and make new ones.

Overall, I'm tentatively optimistic that I'll like 4th Edition better than 3rd Edition, however, there's lots in here that looks somewhat silly and fadish to this grognard.

Since I've been driving back and forth to Milton once a week, I've had more time to think about stuff. And that has lead me to ponder may completely related and somewhat unrelated topics. For example:

A little while ago I was reading an article on the rise of hard-core capitalism in the United States. There were a couple of side notes in the article which caught my attention. Now, if you were to think about the likely origin of some of the most vocal supporters of capitalism, where do you think they would have begun their political idealogical careers? As Libertarians? As moderates? Or would you pick hard-core communists? 'Cause in quite a few cases it was later. These new-found angels of capitalism changed camps shortly after the defenestration of Trotsky.

The most interesting thing is that these people when let down by their former heroes just became extremists of a different colour. I realize this has been part of jokes in sitcoms and the like, but it makes me wonder about how many people truly change and how many just change their colours to avoid having to actually change. It makes me wonder about things like Alcoholics Anonymous programs which are frequently sponsored by evangelical churches. Are they preying upon people who are vulnerable and simply addicting them to religion as opposed to alcohol?

If a person goes from unquestioningly accepting Christian doctrine to unquestioningly accepting feminist doctine, has the person changed at all? Have even learned anything at all from their experiences with Christianity or are they apply tunnel vision to their experiences. Or is the person just trapped in a make-believe black and white world. Where there's a clear them and us, and if you're not with us you must be against us, or vice-versa. I've noted this before where some people seem unable to accept that someone can both do good and bad things. Many, many people will simply choose to ignore the one set of deeds and treat the subject as if they never happened.

In face-to-face gaming, I've run into this many a time where players could not accept that it was not, in fact, ok to use evil methods against evil opponents. It has lead to many a long argument. For some people it's just a matter of wanting to play in a simple word where good people are good and evil people are evil, despite their actions. Personally, I can't stand that type of game. However, I understand it's popularity in the states, success in any form is often revered. Cheating oftens seems perfectly fine to most Americans, as long as you never get caught.

The most startling description was from another player who described events in a campaign they played in where after an epic battle with an army of orcs the orc leaders were defeated and about 2000 remaining orcs surrendered. Now 2000 orcs is a lot for a band of 8 players to ride herd on and the players decided they weren't really enjoying that aspect, so they decided they needed to find a way to get rid of their problem. After discussing it the group was split over what to do with them, one group wanted to escort them back to some group in authority and make them someone else's problem to deal with. The others didn't want to do that, they figured it was too much work, and came up with a simpler solution. They would split the orcs into groups of 100, take them off to locations far enough away from the main group, that they wouldn't be easily re-united. There they would force the orcs to dig a large pit, then when they had finished they would give them poisoned water and then heave the corpses into the pit. When they returned they would tell the other orcs that the first group had been released.

From what I was told the first half of the group was pretty much totally against the second idea. It was abhorrent to them to commit that type of mass murder even against fantasy villians. The other half of the group believed that the orcs were inherently evil and therefore not entitled to the same treatment as people. The DM sided with the genocide group, and they went ahead with the plan despite the objections of the other players. The perhaps worst part of the whole thing was that the group included a paladin character, a champions of righteousness and goodness, who was in the genocide group. Now if you don't play D&D, you should know that the rules at the time, demanded essentially perfection from paladins, a single voluntary evil act could strip a paladin of his status forever, rendering him a second rate warrior. The DM rules that the murder of the 2000 goblins was not an evil act and had no consequences whatsoever for the paladin. The campaign ended that day and those 9 people never played together again. Half of them were so offended by the other players, who could not understand that there was even any room for debate on their actions, that they couldn't move themselves to sit down and play with them again. The remaining players couldn't understand the problem, the characters were good, the orcs were evil. Once the orcs were the dead, the problem was solved.

So what's my point? Nothing really, just musing on things only tangentally related to current events. And thinking about how people who truly learn from their mistakes should be treasured, not despised for admitting that they made mistakes.