PnP differences

This page tries to assemble a complete list of differences between the canonical PnP Dungeons and Dragons, and Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach. Feel free to edit it with any more you may have noticed.

Adventuring

 * The concepts of darkvision, low-light vision, and portable light sources are gone. All characters can see equally well in all areas, and lighting is sufficient for most purposes in most places. However, areas do have varying amounts of light which affects the difficulty of hiding.
 * Throughout the dungeons are scattered rest shrines, which enable you to heal hit points and spell points; this can be done once per shrine during an adventure, with the exception of adventures on "solo" mode, where the shrines can be used once every five minutes, and on "normal" mode, where the shrines can be used every fifteen minutes. Most rest shrines are adjacent to resurrection shrines, which can raise you if you die an infinite number of times.
 * When you rest at a rest shrine you receive Hit points based on the highest Heal skill of a player character near you when you rest. You also receive full spell points back, and Wizard, Cleric, Ranger and Paladin can change their memorised spells, this does not require any extra time to do other than the time taken to use the shrine.
 * The number of monsters you will encounter is significantly higher. It is easily possible to encounter several dozen monsters over the course of one mission, and some missions have over a hundred monsters. The daily spells alloted to a caster have been increased at lower levels to help compensate.
 * The penalty for dying is significantly lower. While in PnP the losses for dying range between a new body and physical abilities (Reincarnation), one level or 2 constitution points (for Raise Dead or Resurrection), or an enormous expenditure of money (True Resurrection, Miracle, Wish), in DDO you get temporary negative level(s) which will dissapear after resting or after a set period of time. Dying multiple times increases the number of negative levels you suffer - one per death, since your last rest. One level will be regained per minute after coming back to life. There can also be indirect costs of dying in DDO. After a quest you will have to repair your gear. The amount of repair necessary (and thus the cost) will be far greater if you end the quest by dying. There will be no cost if you can repair your gear yourself, however.
 * The rate of advancement is significantly lower. While in PnP you advance a level after every 13-14 encounters, in DDO you will probably have way more than that many per quest, and each quest might only give you about 5-15% of the experience necessary to advance a level.
 * Outside of PvP, there is no way to damage another PC. You can detonate a Fireball on your team and yourself with no risk. Occasional spells can impair other PCs, like Grease or Sleet Storm.
 * Portcullises, although see-through, are impervious to spells, arrows, and other forms of attack.
 * The typical dungeon trap is a device-based automaton that is local to the effect: once the control box is located, only a character with at least one level of rogue can disable these traps.
 * DDO dungeons frequently feature doors which can only be opened when some certain monster dies (or set of monsters). Be careful that the monsters you charm are not the "key monster" in these cases, as you will be stuck until you use the dismiss charm feat, the spell wears off or the monster makes a save.
 * There is no movement penalty for being of the dwarven or halfling races, or wearing heavy armor. However, there are dodge penalties as well as unrealistically minimal jumping and swimming penalties from wearing heavy armor or carrying heavy loads.

Character Classes and Advancement

 * Instead of animal companion and tracking, rangers get both Two Weapon Fighting and archery combat styles, without their limitation of having to wear light or no armor
 * PCs recieve +20 hp at first level, and full hit-dice thereafter. (This makes a high constitution relatively less valuable, but there are many more monsters than in PnP D&D so a good amount of HP will help you to survive a pack of monsters in one piece.
 * Sorcerers and Bards can change known spells. By visiting a trainer and paying a fee based on spell level, a single spell is unlearned and replaced with a new spell. After changing a spell, you must wait three days before you may change another.
 * Clerics have no domain or identified deity.
 * Wizards have no familiar nor opportunity for specialization.
 * Rogues get sneak attack bonus on any enemy not attacking them. They also can Hide without cover, although this becomes difficult in brightly lit areas and if no distraction exists.
 * Barbarians get Damage Reduction abilities 5 levels sooner than normal. (This compensates them for monsters making a smaller number of more damaging attacks).
 * The Paladin's Lay on Hands ability has been significantly boosted to compensate for the higher levels of hit points.
 * Paladins may not split up healing between multiple uses of Lay on Hands: they may use it once per day and it heals for the full allotment. (However, certain enhancements can allow them to use Lay on Hands additional times, increasing the amount of damage they can heal.)
 * The Paladin's Aura of Good ability provides a bonus of +1 on AC and saves to all allies within its radius of effect which can be further enhanced as ranks (not just levels) are gained.
 * Paladin Lay on Hands produces Divine Cure or Repair, as appropriate.
 * Multiclass characters never have an XP penalty.
 * The druid class has not been implemented in the game. (This may be added in a later update.)
 * Characters can reach a maximum of level 20. (This level cap may be increased in later updates.)
 * Enhancements provide a new method of character advancement, which bears little resemblance to Action Point usage in Eberron, the Campaign Setting of the world where this game is taking place.
 * Prestige Classes appear in the form of Enhancements taken at levels 6, 12, and 18.
 * New attacks gained from higher BAB gives bonus to attack rolls 5 points higher than the previous attack instead of 5 points lower.

Races

 * Halflings have lost their penalties of slower running speed and smaller weapon sizes. Their advantage of fitting in smaller spaces is also gone.
 * Elves are light-skinned primarily in the game, whereas in Eberron elves could be black, dark brown, and many other varieties of flesh tone.

Combat

 * Combat is real-time, not turn-based.
 * The concept of attacks of opportunity, grappling, initiative, and being flat-footed are gone. (The Uncanny Dodge class feature, which in PnP gives protection against being flat-footed, is now an active ability that provides temporary bonuses to AC and Reflex saves.)
 * PCs receive a second attack at BAB +1, instead of BAB +6.
 * Nobody can be disarmed. Sunder debuffs AC instead of breaking equipment.  (This would make monks relatively less valuable.) although a weapon is automatically unequipped when it has sustained damage (usually from attacking monsters with damage reduction or oozes) equal to its durability and thus requires repair.
 * Regardless of your Swim skill, underwater combat is, in most cases impossible. The new quest series, Sentinels, features underwater combat, as will a number of other upcoming quests.
 * It is possible to "block" by holding Shift. While blocking, you may not attack, but you gain a +2 bonus to AC and, if you have a shield equipped, you gain some DR as well.
 * Shields are more powerful, as they provide DR when blocking (see above). Thus, weapons which disallow shields
 * Drawing a dagger into your off-hand takes much longer than equipping a two-handed weapon or tower shield- essentially, too long to be done in combat.
 * Melee (not ranged) attacks have a -4 hit penalty while moving. The feat Spring Attack negates the penalty. Note also that tumbling followed by an immediate attack does not give rise to this -4 penalty.
 * Repeating crossbows fire three shots at a rate of fire faster than a bow before requiring a reload.
 * Heavy and light crossbows reload at the same speed.
 * Darts and shurikens cannot be thrown from both hands.

Monsters

 * Touching a Black Pudding or other ooze monster does not hurt you, so you may attack with Unarmed Strikes without HP worry. (That will be the most affordable way to kill them). However, items worn on your hands (gloves, rings and possibly bracers) will be affected by ooze acid and require frequent repairs.
 * Monsters' regeneration rates (such as on trolls) are significantly higher, however regeneration halts when they have zero hp, regardless of damage type suffered, except for the scrag trolls in Ataraxias Haven which require fire or acid damage to finally kill.
 * Hill, Fire, and Storm Giants move slower than PC races, instead of faster. All three such giants are about the same height (instead of Storm being much taller)
 * Many monsters have significantly more hit points than their PnP counterparts.
 * Most monsters have higher attributes than their PnP counterparts.

Equipment

 * Multiple magic items will not stack, for example a +1 charisma item, and a +2 charisma item, will only yeild you +2 charisma.
 * Tomes do not stack, a +1 bonus will stay, until you read a +2 tome, This will net you a +2 bonus, not a +3. Two, +1 tomes, only net one +1 bonus, not a +2 bonus.
 * Magic items have a minimum character level prerequisite to equip them. The limit seems to be (Pluses*2)-2 for weapons/armor, or equal to the caster level (for spell triggers).  For example, this means that a level 4 wizard cannot use a wand of Fireball, but a barbarian4/sorcerer1 can use it, because his total levels equal the caster level.  The Use Magic Device skill cannot defeat this limitation.
 * No composite bows built for high strength. Instead, there is the feat Bow Strength, which allows a character to add their Strength bonus to bow damage. Rangers automatically get it at level 1, and fighters can choose it as one of their bonus fighter feats, though anybody can choose it as one of their regular feats.
 * All weapons have just one physical damage type. Daggers can't Slash, and Morning Stars can't Pierce.
 * Coins are weightless and take up no space, while gems are low-weight and occupy as much volume as platemail armor unless stored in a Gem Bag.
 * If your strength is high enough, carrying 10 Greataxes is no more cumbersome than 10 Daggers.
 * All magical ammunition and projectile weapons (unless Returning) are immediately destroyed with one use.

Feats

 * Activating Combat Expertise or just Defensive Fighting takes longer than equipping a shield, and can be interrupted by knockdown.
 * It is no longer possible to use multiple trade-BAB-for-something abilities such as Defensive Fighting, Combat Expertise, or Power Attack at the same time.
 * You do not get to select an exact number of points of BAB to take off when using Power Attack. Instead, it automatically defaults to your base attack bonus or 5, whichever is lower. If you have enhancements from APs which increase your damage increase beyond 5, this value is always used if it is lower than your BAB (This makes Power Attack less useful.)
 * You do not get to select an exact number of points of BAB to take off when using Combat Expertise. Instead, it automatically reduces your attack bonus by 5 and adds 5 to your AC (even if your base attack bonus is below 5).
 * Weapon specific feats like Weapon Focus or Improved Critical apply to whole weapon categories (slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, thrown, ranged) and not to single weapons. This means that a two-handed fighter can use the same feats to master both swords and axes, or that a two weapon fighter can master rapier and shortsword together.
 * Rapid shot feat decreases the reload time of missile weapons. It does not grant multiple attacks per click, nor does it impose a -2 to hit penalty.
 * Cleave and Great Cleave have been changed to be active feats that allow you to attack enemies in an arc.
 * Several new feats have been added, such as Precision and Slicing Blow.

Skills

 * Skills gone: Knowledge, Climb, Sense Motive, Disguise, Spellcraft, Craft, Escape Artist, Sleight of Hands, Use Rope.
 * The Intimidate skill is used in combat to draw the attention of an enemy (equivalent of "Taunting" in other MMOs)
 * The Diplomacy skill works the other way around (enemies targeting you will switch their focus to somone else).
 * Use Magic Device has variable difficulty values for wands.
 * Tumbling gives an AC bonus during combat but you can't tumble through occupied spaces anymore. Jumping over them replaces this, making Jump more valuable.
 * Many skills have been changed so that they are not very useful, and some skills that are not very useful in PnP (such as Jump) have become more useful. See Skill usefulness for details.

Spells

 * Spells are cast using a spell points system. Prepared spellcasters must still select a limited list of spells to prepare (equal to the number of spells they get to prepare per day in PnP) but they can cast each one many times.
 * Spell points from different classes (e.g. wizard, sorcerer, cleric) stack into one common pool.
 * Spellcasters can cast nearly 8 times as many spells before resting. In relation to healing magic, this makes high hitpoints and Fortitude saves relatively less valuable.
 * All spells of the same class and level use the same material component (if they have an MC at all). However, some spells, such as stoneskin, and create undead have special, more expensive material components. The Holy Sword Spell has a special material component - a special weapon sold in the House Jorasco Ward.
 * Touch attacks are gone, both normal and ranged. Some spells have been given Reflex saves in their place. (This means that high-dex characters are relatively less powerful)The reasoning being that, since we are figthing in a real time, we can avoid them by simply moving.
 * Touch spells now have a range over 15 feet. This applies equally to helpful (Cure Light Wounds) and harmful (Shocking Grasp), making all Touch spells more powerful.
 * Each spell has its own cooldown timer before it can be repeated. That means the fastest way to heal someone is to use a mix of Serious, Moderate, and Light cure spells.
 * Major spells gone: Levitate, Fly, Spider-Climb, Polymorph, and almost all Divination and Illusion (except Detect Secret Doors and Phantasmal Killer).
 * Command only allows "Lay down", not any other action.
 * Suggestion functions as charm person, except usable on giants in addition to humanoids.
 * Web has no limit on the distance of anchor points, so it can be used outdoors and will anchor against the moon. Webbed creatures can't attack.
 * Charm Person and Charm Monster are more powerful, in that the victims will fight hopeless odds for you. But they are less flexible, in that you can't give the target any other commands, and also can't end the spell early (Command Undead and the like are similar) - This has been changed, all classes that can charm have a 'dismiss charm' feat that will allow them to cancel their charm.
 * Dispel Magic has many fewer applications.
 * Many spells have had their damage ranges altered slightly.

Miscellaneous

 * The concepts of languages and literacy are gone.
 * NPC clerics will provide free "Half-True, Half-Turbine" Resurrection, in addition to other pay per use spells. Potions can be bought to heal common ailments like Curse and Blindness.
 * While it is possible to acquire negative levels, negative levels never result in actual level loss.
 * Fear effects prevent attacking, spellcasting, and skill usage, but does not affect movement.