So, my buddy sheerdark pointed out the free trial on D&D online. Obviously, as a veteran junkie of MMOs, and being an RPG geek, I had to join in. Of course, first try, I get the US version, and he's in Europe, where there's another version. Not a big deal, I guess. Fixable, with another 1.7gb download, and another hour of patching after. And sacrificing another e-mail to the great gods of Free Trials.

So, once on the right server, I take advantage of my first two characters and forge a human cleric. The dwarven one wasn't bad, but I figured out how to get more milage out of the extra feat than any minor racial modifier. But I'll get to that.

First, if you've no idea how d20 D&D works... um. Wow. Why on earth are you reading my LJ?

d20 is based on rolls from a twenty-sided die. This means all modifiers translate to 5% per point. +3 = +15%. This covers skill rolls, attack rolls, and "save" rolls. The latter is when you are trying to resist an effect.

Damage uses different dice. It varies by weapon.

If you're very familiar with d20, great... but your only real advantage is knowing the feat system. And knowing what you need to look for when you start figuring out what to customize and what direction.

There are some differences. Quite a few. Big ones. First off, enhancements. These are like feats. Only easier to come by, and point-based. 4 times per level, you get a point to spend on these. Some cost only 1. Some cost up to six. They can be un-equipped... for a price, but it seemed to be less than a good suit of armor. It's the 3-day waiting period before you can do it again that's kinda steep. Similar issue with feats, they can be exchanged at a level-based sum of money best described as exorbitant. Aaand they also require a very valuable tradable rare. And they also get a 3-day waiting period after. Although, a level 1 quest gives you a freebie... so it's not unworkable.

And consider, in the game, the cost of respec doesn't involve bribing the GM with pizza or fellatio. Big plus over the... uh... "Real Life" pen and paper version. Wow. Now there's some recursive abstraction.

So, what the enhancements actually do? They let you customize a LOT more than you'd normally manage in the system. You can grab a couple more points in vital skills, flavored abilities, new powers, and even a couple of modifiers to primary stats. Yay. Some have prerequisites... and of course higher versions require the previous versions... so, technically, almost all of them have prerequisites. Wow fans will get the concept, as it is not dissimilar from the talent trees there. However, it's thinner, and you don't need calculus to figure out the benefits. There's no "% chance to enter Clearcasting state after a critical hit with arcane bash. This makes the next froob missile instant-cast and at no mana cost. Offer void where prohibited, void may swallow lawyers and the remainder of this tooltip."

The most complicated enhancement I've seen? "3% chance for a critical effect of 1.5x damage on elemental spells." It's a pre-req for two lines of enhancements. Its own line adds another 3% each time. The other boosts the multiplier by 0.25 each time. Caps out at 9% and 2.25. You know exactly what it does, and how often it does it. IF you bother with it. There's a few 10% effect boosts to pretty broad categories. For wizards, "Elements (fire/cold)" "Energy (acid/electric)" and "Force". For clerics, heal/harm and light/good. woo.

Now, being me, I did the research and figured out that everybody can, by picking a feat that favors repair skill in some fashion, buy a two-point enhancement to pull out an "iron defender" pet. Yeah, metal doggie golem/bot. According to the interface, it's CR 3. It's also a bit messy. It sprays the target in oil, making it quite likely to fall down... but that's an area effect. Tends to make me fall down too.

I let it solo a few adventures for me. Worked nicely. One was protecting a chest. 15 bandits come over the course of a couple minute to try and smash it and take the item within. Thankfully, they don't swarm all at once, but the pet can handle it quite nicely.

So the system will let you do things that give you pretty spectactular benefits. Of course, there are downsides. I left a mission before Ryo... and it ate him. Bad doggie!

Other changes from stock D&D, while spells *do* have to be memorized... at inns or rest points in dungeons, they're cast with spell points. It's more like if you had a hotbar limit. A starting cleric has 14 lv 1 spells. One, cure light wounds, is pre-loaded. That leaves two spells to load up. Some of these are nice. Some are pointless. Like, inflict light wounds. 1d8+caster level damage... save vs. will for half. 10 spell points. Compare that to Nimbus of Light, which does 1d8+caster level points of light-based damage. No saving throw.

Some are sillier. Like Doom, which, if successful, leaves the target shaken and at -2 on most rolls. It's right next to Cause Fear which, if successful, make the target run away, and if it fails... it leaves the target shaken.

Both are single-target, first level spells. Classic D&D, really.

First level spells cost 10 spell points. Second level is 15. I'm betting 3rd is 20. I started with about 170 spell points. Got another 29 when I levelled. Bought another 20 with an enhancement. That's rather a lot of spellcasting. Everybody seems to get max rolls on hp, and a bonus 20 points just for being a player.

The HP is where this game starts to really differ from "normal" mmos. If you weren't counting the "memorization slots" already. In D&D, if you get hit for 10 points, you say "Ow." Because you are probably starting with under 30, and you MAY eventually get up to 100. Luck pays a biiiig role in combat. In a few fights, I had on very good armor, and was very hard to damage. I was fighting something that was pretty hard to hit. So we'd stand toe to toe and not do a dang thing. It wasn't really a contest tho. I was playing a cleric. I can cast heal on myself... so if I got hit badly, I could recover. Took less than a minute to resolve the fight, and that was mostly due to the number of misses on both sides.

Incidently, I strongly recommend using the auto-attack feature. You can right-click to swing, but for maximum effect, auto-attack will have you swinging about twice as often. Also lets you brace for a fight. I'd seen a spider coming for me, had auto-attack on, targetted it, and then just waited for it to approach. Before it could attack, it was hit, and a small spider doesn't really take two hits from a +1 mace.

Now, a lot of these differences in the game are because you're creating an MMO. Some margin for error is absolutely required because you're not saying "I approach the beast and start using my vorpal salad fork to remove its teeth... rectally." No, you have to actually walk all the way there. When everybody has to do this, the first one into a fight is in for a very painful moment of having the undivided attention of the monster. There is no "I'll cast cure moderate right after I grab some Dew and hit the can." Your healer must be swift.

Now, even if you go to negative HP, death doesn't hit 'till -10. Healing can be done. Almost any player can use a healing kit and get you back on your feet. After that, you need some ressurection. Either hit the button and live again in town, at your "home" tavern, or wait. Even if there's no high-level clerics to ressurect you, your teammates can drag you to a rest point. These have 2 statues. One does ressurections, the other does recharge. So the game is playable almost regardless of party composition. If you're patient, or prepared.

Nice. Now for the pure MMO bits. There's unlockable content. I like that. The least of it was something fairly recently added. A quest to unlock dragonmark feats. A skill bonus and a spell-like ability. Nice stuff. You just have to take a quiz. Get 4-5 questions right, (or try again, no penalty for failure) and you get one feat respec and ALL characters on your account get the dragonmarks unlocked.

You also get to unlock extra character slots for the account, and the Drow race. Glad that's initially reserved. Cuts down on drizzt clones.

Most of these are based on the level of favor you have with the various houses, *cough* *cough* *faction* *cough* Ahem. Sorry, bit of flegm. Favor is based on quests, and their difficulty level. There's 4 difficulty levels, solo/normal/hard/elite. Some quests are solo-only. Some quests don't have a solo difficulty. Finish on normal to unlock hard. Finish hard to unlock elite. Each time, the favor increases.

This does make it a lot more likely that you won't miss any content. However, you're actually obligated to play each adventure about three times, unless you teamed up with someone who'd unlocked elite. This also means that it isn't possible to enter a mission area on the high difficulty level without someone who knows the way. Interesting.

XP is from quests. Complete quests, get xp. Some have optional bonus conditions that give some more xp. And the more stuff that gets done, % modifiers. Mostly, kill a LOT of the enemy, smash anything breakable, find the secrets, disarm the traps.

Some areas, like the sewers, have encounters in set locations. Wipe out the monsters in that encounter, get some xp on the spot. There's also some outdoor exploration available. The one I poked my head into immediately gave me a list of places to find for xp, (with completion bonus), a # of monsters to eliminate for xp (promptly replaced with a higher limit right after) and a few special encounters to try and find. I suppose this is for A) Fun. B) if you'd managed to get a very high-level person to blitz you through a lot of missions, and needed something to do for XP to make up for the XP penalty of overlevelled adventuring.

The whole thing seems built for you to blitz many missions with full groups. Every chest in every mission has a number of items rolled up for each character. No ninja! Well, maybe ninja. The only corpse lootable are collectibles. 3 lousy whatever is worth 1 lousy prize from the collector. Then again, maybe not so lousy. I got a good 12 healing potions that way. 2 mediums is a mid-range item. And a good rare one is something kinda sweet. A rare mushroom got me masterwork chainmail. A friendly kobold is swapping for missiles. 20 masterwork (random type) for the low, +1 for the middle, and +1 anti-reptile for the top. With an extra die of damage and +2 to hit, I'm thinking this is intended to curb the local kobold problem VERY thoroughly.

Only other thing you can snag seems to be a few coins and a few regular missiles from the odd crate. Really worthless stuff in this game's economy.

The economy works, but it feels broken. It just feels wrong to be level 1 and holding plat. I think the plat is worth 10 gold. But... exchange isn't automatic. So you could have hundreds of gold, and a few plat... and need a calculator to figure out exactly how much "money" you have. Copper and silver... anybody's guess. You will never worry about them. You will buy your thieve's tools, or spell components, and stick 'em in the back of your pack. You will buy food and drink at the inn after you get your rear handed to you by a larger number of monsters than you expected. And while they've got their costs... and they do speed recovery... we're talking pretty negligible expenses. It's nice to not sweat the small stuff.

Item repair... not everything gets damaged. Depends on what you're fighting. Badly damaged items seem to end up permanently weaker when repaired. So you will eventually wear out that +1 item. Minor dents get buffed out tho. 3/70 points of durability gone makes me sad, but I still calculate having a +2 or even just a different +1 mace WELL before it goes away. Even if I had to buy a replacement, I could.

Item acquisition... chests, shops, quest rewards, auctions... and something called a pawn shop. It's a store you sell things to for a better price than a normal shop. Only the item then goes in the store's inventory. For another player to buy. It's like an auction-house, only it's game-run, and no-waiting. Interesting idea.

The last thing I want to bring up is probably the best thing about the game. The quest trackers. That's right. Plural. You have two of them. One is the normal sort, which tells you what stage you are at for a given quest, what zone it was assigned in, and what you do next to advance it. The other is special. It has 2 tabs. One tab shows your faction... er, favor with each house or organization. Yeah, ruling factions. The other... shows you EVERY quest you could concievably access at your level, and every quest you've done, and at what difficulty. Also how many points of favor and for what faction. So if you were 2 points from the next reward with the Coin Lords... you could instantly see what quests would help. So maybe you help another guy get through one you've done before, at a higher difficulty level, and you get what you need.

Most games, this sort of database is only available on a website. Never one made or operated by the company. As soon as a game is announced, there's a warcry site created for it. This just cuts out the middleman.

Almost cuts out the middleman. The quests are very nearly inventive, as far as their goals go. Sure, most of it's bog-standard enter the crypt, hit the switches to open the grate to kill the foozle and raid the chest it was guarding. One warehouse, very interesting puzzle. The scroll you are after is in a glowing sphere. The floor around it is a bunch of panels with lines etched in. Using a panel rotates it. One is glowing. You need to turn the panels to make the corner runes all glow. It's not bad. Dead easy, and I'd hate to run it with a large group all trying to... "help". But not bad. Being asked not to destroy the coffins in a spider-infested crypt... also interesting. Trying to get an armored cleric through a stealth mission without killing more than a handful of guards? Uh. Wow. That sucked. I ended up dragging them all around the map in order to have the seconds I needed for the switches.

One mission actually had no combat. Pack of dogs in a sewer had evicted a friendly kobold. Your task, lead 'em to the exit without killing any. It's a whole mission based on PULLING.

So, while not all of the game makes sense, and it's not all fair, it's not extremely solo-able, and it's d20 based... It ain't bad. Heck, if you do ALL the quests on their hardest level, max out favor... you get the 7th character slot and you can gen characters with a larger point-buy. Just a few points, but that's... well, see the earlier point about 5%.

Of course, you're probably sick of the game at that point, too. Ah well, maybe there'll be some crafting by then...