Wizards just posted an article about the 4th Edition rogue. Let’s see what we can learn from it.

1. Armor Training: Leather. At first blush, this seems pretty restricted; they’re only trained with leather armor? However, the Classes and Races book makes mention of the fact that terms that used to represent a single suit of armor, like padded, leather, or chain, are now entire categories of armor. Thus, the rogue is proficient with all types of leather armor.

2. Weapon proficiencies. Again, it seems restrictive to only be proficient with five weapons. It makes me wonder, though, of these weapons are categories or descriptors rather than individual weapons, much like leather armor. Perhaps there are several different kinds of daggers, several different kinds of shuriken, several different kinds of hand crossbow. Who can say at this point?

3. Hit points and healing surges. So now we see how starting hit points are calculated: a base number (12 in this case) plus the character’s Constitution score. Assuming an average Constitution of 10, that means the rogue starts with 22 hit points, significantly more than a 3rd Edition rogue with the same Constitution score, who starts at 6. Also, we now see that characters get a flat hit point increase at every level (5 per level, in this case). This eliminates the possibility of rolling a 1 on your hit die and being screwed, effectively, which is nice. It’s interesting to note, however, that Constitution apparently has no bearing on hit points per level. It does, however, have a bearing on healing surges. 6 + Constitution modifier. I’d assume that that’s a per day number, because 6+ healing surges per encounter seems excessive. Now, how do healing surges work? It’s been mentioned that the second wind ability, introduced in Star Wars Saga Edition, simply triggers a healing surge, presumably when you’re bloodied (1/2 hit points). It’s also been mentioned that many leader abilities allow you to use healing surges, so it would seem that healing surges are not something that you can just use whenever you want. Finally, it’s been mentioned that the fighter has the most self-healing ability of any class. Now that we see that healing surges are tied to class, we can probably assume that the fighter has a much higher base number of surges, and probably has a number of powers that trigger them.

4. Skills. Skills seem to be handled in much the same manner as Star Wars Saga Edition, with a simple trained/untrained differentiation. I’m actually quite happy about this; I like that system better because of its simplicity. The rogue class skill list is considerably shorter than it used to be, but the skills are, I’d imagine, considerably broader in application. It’s interesting to see that Bluff and Intimidate are still individual skills, rather than being rolled into a single social über-skill. The Knowledge skill seems to have been deconstructed into individual skills like Dungeoneering and Streetwise, and these skills probably have more application than the aforementioned skill did. And what does Insight do?

5. Builds. Probably a good idea to include these, for new players, but it’s nice to know that you can feel free to ignore them completely. It is nice to see that diversity of concept is being build right into the class description. Also, you still get a feat at first level, and you still get a bonus feat if you’re a human. You also apparently get to choose two at will powers, one encounter power, and one per day power, all at first level. That’s a lot of choice right out of the gate.

8. Class Features and Powers. It’s interesting to see that these are two different things. Class Features are things that all members of a class share in common, while Powers are more specific to the individual, and are up to player choice. I was wondering how they’d handle this, and the solution is pretty simple.

7. First Strike. So the rogue gets combat advantage over people who haven’t acted yet, which strongly implies that other people do not. It makes me wonder what other things grant combat advantage. Flanking? Attacking from the shadows? Feinting?

8. Rogue Tactics. These are both very cool and useful abilities. I wonder if we’re missing a few abilities here that will actually be in the PHB. Two doesn’t seem like all that many, so I wonder if they held a few back because they weren’t necessary to the preview.

9. Rogue Weapon Talent. This seems like a nice way to make choices that appear sub-optimal a little bit better. The rogue has three ranged weapons and two melee weapons available. Both the hand crossbow and the sling do more damage than do shuriken, so this ability helps to bring the shuriken up to par and make them a little more attractive. The short sword does more damage than the dagger, and both can be used for Sneak Attacks (assuming they’re both considered light blades, which I’d imagine they are), but now the dagger is a little more accurate. Not a bad idea.

10. Sneak Attack. These numbers are considerably lower at higher levels than I expected. 2d6 is a lot at first level in comparison to the current scale, but 3d6 at paragon and 5d6 at epic seems low. I guess you have to factor in the fact that you get this damage whenever you have combat advantage and are using the appropriate weapon, and that Sneak Attack can be used in conjunction with Powers that deal extra damage. There may even be Powers or Feats that increase Sneak Attack damage, or even weapons that do so.

11. Deft Strike. This appears to be a pretty vanilla attack (though it should be noted that rogue powers apparently allow the rogue to use Dexterity for both the attack and damage bonuses on both melee and ranged attacks; nice), with the exception that you can move two squares before the attack. This is a standard action, which means that you’d presumably get a move action as well, which means that this is extra movement, which is nice. It’s a little like Spring Attack in that you can move two squares to your opponent, attack, and then use your move action to get out of melee range. Or you could simply use those as two extra squares of movement when you’re trying to reach someone far away. Interesting, though, that this power can be used with every rogue weapon except for the shuriken, unless the shuriken is considered a light blade. Also, the power scales with level to some extent, doubling your weapon damage at epic levels.

12. Piercing Strike. A melee attack that ignores armor. On the one hand, that’s pretty nasty. On the other, you have to be in melee range to use it.

13. Positioning Strike. An attack against Will that moves your opponent. So not only does it ignore armor, it also can move someone into flanking position (or out of it), or away from an ally. A defender’s worst nightmare. It can only be used once per encounter, though.

14. Torturous Strike. A per-encounter attack that deals double weapon damage. Not too bad. Also, if you chose the Brutal Scoundrel tactic, you get to add your Dexterity modifier and your Strength modifier to your damage. Pretty nasty.

15. Tumble. So, not only do we now see a rogue power that isn’t an attack, we also see that the Tumble skill has been turned into a rogue power. You get to shift half your speed, which I believe means you get to move without provoking opportunity attacks. Not too shabby, and it doesn’t even require an extra roll. Only once per encounter, though.

16. Crimson Edge. So this is what a 9th-level daily rogue power looks like. Ouch. It ignores armor, deals double weapon damage, causes 5+ ongoing damage every round, and causes the target to grant you combat advantage, opening him up to sneak attacks. Nasty stuff. And, even if you miss you wind up dealing normal attack damage. An interesting note is that a save ends both the ongoing damage and the combat advantage. How do saves work, I wonder, and what is there relationship to defenses?

All in all, I’m very pleased with this preview. I think 4th Edition is going to do a lot of cool things for the game, and this clearly isn’t D&D 3.75.

I don’t believe I’ve shared this yet, but I’ve sort of been on an unofficial hiatus from game design. As in, I’ve just been too lazy to do it. At any rate, I’ve been bitten by the bug again, so I’m going back to designing Wild Blue. I’ve had some ideas regarding mechanics recently, ideas that have really excited me, and I’m starting to put pen to paper again, in a mostly digital, metaphorical sense. These ideas incorporate some elements of Saga, but many of the ideas are wholly new (though I’ll admit to some influence from other RPGs, most notably Dogs in the Vineyard. At any rate, I’ve decided that, as I design Wild Blue, I’m going to document the process, if only to give myself an outlet for some of the things going through my head. This will be the first of my design diaries.

This first diary will focus on what is effectively my mission statement for the mechanics that will provide the foundation for Wild Blue. I have a number of goals in mind, and I’m going to outline them here.

1. The mechanics will be easy to learn and use. A lesson I learned with Saga was not to overcomplicate things. In one particular playtest, one of my testers was a novice gamer; he had never played a role-playing game before, and had limited experience with board games, too. Throughout the entire four-hour playtest, I had to repeatedly explain what he should do, how many dice he should roll, and why. I don’t in any way consider this to be a failing on the part of the tester; far from it, it was clearly a failing on the part of myself and the system I designed. Despite my broad-strokes approach in Saga, I had made the basic mechanics a little too complicated, and while experienced role-players and board gamers seemed able to grasp them with relative ease, a novice gamer had considerable difficulty. This is a problem I aim to avoid in Wild Blue.

2. The mechanics will allow for narrative control for the players. This is a big one. Saga had leanings in this direction, but didn’t go quite far enough. In Wild Blue, successfully resolving an action means that you get to narrate its resolution. This means that you get to decide how you succeed, and describe it. On the flip side, it also means that you can choose to fail, and if you do so, there will be some form of compensation, and not just the fact that you can choose how you fail; I mean mechanical compensation, an incentive of some sort.

3. The mechanics will allow for a wide array of character options. Saga, I think, succeeded fairly well in this regard. The skills were broad enough that you could create specialties that described your character fairly well, and traits allowed you to do this even more so. But I want to go a little bit further with this idea. There will be certain aspects of your character that are chosen from pre-defined lists, that do pre-defined things. However, the most important aspects of your character will be wholly player-created, and will be descriptive of your character. I also want drives to be a more central, more important aspect of your character.

4. The setting will inform the mechanics. Saga was deliberately generic. While I want Wild Blue’s system to have some aspect of wide applicability (I’d still like the system to be open-source), I want to have mechanics that reinforce, and are reinforced by, the setting. I don’t want to create a generic system and try to shoe-horn my setting into it, I want to create a system and a setting that are intertwined and designed with each other in mind. If the system can be used for other settings regardless, that’s just a bonus.

5. The mechanics will make it easy to be the GM. I tried to do this with Saga, and to some extent I think I succeeded, but I didn’t define things well enough for the GM. During my playtests, it was easy for me to adapt on the fly to what the players did, and to improvise challenges for them quickly and seamlessly. However, I always felt that I was fudging things to some extent. There weren’t any well-defined difficulty scales, so it was never clear how hard a given challenge should be. I want to change that in Wild Blue, and define things better so that there’s less guess-work involved in being the GM.