D&D 3.75?

Alright, we've got somethings coming down to the pipeline in the next few months. Chief among these, at least on my radar and as far as gaming goes, is the eminent release of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Many of you are not enthused about this, and don't plan on "upgrading" (I use the term only in sense that the number 4 is higher than the number 3.5). I'm very excited but I understand your trepidition.

And you're not the only ones with fears. It doesn't take much digging to find doom and gloom surrounding all information about D&D4E that is coming out in July. Not everyone is going to update to the new edition, and one of the bigger players decidedly not joining on the bandwagon is Paizo Publishing.

The fine folks at Paizo are the people who published Dragon and Dungeon magazines until recently (when the licenses were returned to Wizards of the Coast so that they could create an online version of these fine print magazines). Paizo jumped right into their next project, a monthly hybridazation of the two magazines called Pathfinder. I have not yet taken the time to purchase one of the Pathfinder issues/modules -partly because of the price ($20 each) and partly because I already have a lot of stuff.

Just a few days ago, however, Paizo announced that they would not be going to 4th Edition. Instead, they're going to continue with the d20 system, which they (and many others) feel isn't broken but definitely could use some tweaks. So they announced the open playtest of the Pathfinder RPG - D&D 3.75 to the rest of us. They have Alpha Release I out already available as a free download. There is a lot of interesting things in there, and I'd like to incorporate a lot of it into our D&D campaigns going forward. I will hold off on full incorporation until the rest of the Alpha releases come out (the first one only covers cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, skills, a lot of feats, races, and some spells) but there are things that I'd like to use in the next session.

Here's a breakdown of things I'm incorporating now that affect all characters:

* Starting hp for a character is max class hp PLUS the PC's Constitution score. This is a one time boost. Existing characters get to add their Constitution score to their total hp.

* Racial ability score increases. Essentially all the races get a +2 to a different attribute. Here's the breakdown:

Dwarf - +2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Cha
Elf - +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Con
Gnome - +2 Cha, +2 Con, -2 Str
Half-Elf - +2 to any one attribute
Half-Orc - +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Int
Halfling - +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Str
Human - +2 to any one attribute

Adjust your PC accordingly.

* New feat progression. Characters gain new feats every odd level, starting at 1st (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, etc.). The old way was every third level, so this equates to more feats for all characters.

* Character death occurs at -10 - current level instead of just -10. So a 1st level character dies at -11, and a 20th-level character dies at -30. Easy to calculate and should keep PCs alive longer.

* Sneak attacks and criticals apply to all creatures - including undead, elementals, and constructs.

* Sneak attack damage only applies once per round, but is multiplied with a critical (same multiplier as the weapon).

* A wizard can now Overcast. What this means is they can cast ANY spell out of their spellbook by taking a full-round action and making a Spellcraft check. The DC is 15 + (spell level x 3). Metamagic feats cannot be applied to overcasting. If the check fails the caster is fatigued. If the caster is already fatigued and fails the Spellcraft check, he is instead exhausted. If an exhausted caster fails the Spellcraft check he falls unconscious for 1d6 hours. This one I'm going to watch a little more carefully to see if it gets abused (or if it's too hard or too easy to overcast). Thoughts welcome.

* No one in the Age of Worms campaign has a cleric, but Turn/Rebuke Undead is replaced by a Positive/Negative Energy Burst. The cleric can use this ability a set number of times per day (same as Turn Undead) and it creates a burst of energy in a 30 foot radius. Creatures healed by positive energy are healed 1d6 + 1d6/2 cleric levels beyond the first and undead are harmed by the same amount. Undead get a save for half damage. Evil clerics do the same thing except with negative energy.

* Specific feat changes. Cleave becomes the following: As a standard action make an attack. If it hits you get a free attack against another foe in your reach. Great Cleave becomes the following: As a standard action make an attack. If it hits you get a free attack against another foe in your reach. You can continue this for every foe in range but you cannot hit a foe more than once. Dodge becomes the following: +1 dodge bonus to AC.

I'd like to incorporate skill changes as well, but I'll wait on that one. Additional there will be more feat changes but I'll wait to incorporate those along with the combat maneuver bonus (CMB) to replace clunky grapple, disarm, trip, and sunder checks.

I encourage everyone to download a copy of the free Alpha Release I from Paizo's website (http://www.paizo.com/) and take a look at the changes. We'll try these out and see how they work.