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Yeah. Cool. Uh-huh. If you're an absolute fan of this product, you should really just not read any further.
Let's start with what's good about it. The artwork, featuring tons of work by some very, very talented artists, is absolutely wonderful. Visually, this book is a delight. While I confess some nostalgia for the Da Vinci inspired chapter headers of the previous edition, overall this is a much better looking product than any that's gone before.
Unfortunately, the beautiful artwork might distract you from some pretty serious problems with the text, specifically its organization. The chapters are, initially, laid out in a sensible order:
1. How to Play 2. Making Characters 3. Character Races 4. Character Classes 5. Skills 6. Feats 7. Equipment 8. Adventuring 9. Combat 10. Rituals
The only moderate anomaly in this chapter order is putting Rituals at the end of the book. Rituals (described as "complex ceremonies that create magical effects") should really come after Equipment and before Adventuring. The book makes a big deal about the expense of the materials needed to perform rituals, and how the books that contain the information involved are a form of treasure. So I honestly have no idea why they didn't put this section of the book in with the rest of the information about treasure.
I should note here that I think the idea of rituals is wonderful. Since the ability to cast these spells is available to anyone who has either Arcane or Religious knowledge and takes a feat to learn to use them, we finally have a D&D magic system that acknowledges that not all magic-users are combat casters. Finally, it's possible to build a version of Fritz Leiber's Gray Mouser that doesn't have levels of Wizard, however modified, which would allow him to cast spells in battle, something that he never does! Instead, the Mouser is a Rogue trained in Arcane knowledge and with the feat that would allow him to use ritual forms of magic. In this, again, this edition outshines previous editions like the sun outshines the stars.
But we're being mean and focusing on the parts that suck. The organizational suckage gets started in the chapter on the new character classes. At first, it seems quite logical to put the information on the various "powers" with the information on the classes who can have those powers, rather than separating them, as spells were separated from character classes in earlier editions. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the powers -- no, description is far too kind a word for the single sentences of flavor text that we are given for each individual effect -- the information about the powers is then organized in a way that is a gigantic retrograde step.
It was in the third edition that the spell descriptions were put in strict alphabetical order, with references in the spell data that pointed back to the spell lists to which the various spells belonged. In this edition, we go back to having the powers (spells, prayers and exploits) organized by level. Admittedly, there is a certain amount of unification going on here. Rather than "level" meaning more than one thing, with a 9th level spell only becoming available to those who've attained the 17th or 18th character level in a given class, level -- in this context, at least, now means exactly the same thing in both cases. You can only have access to 12th level powers if you've achieved 12th level.
But this means that if you're looking up a given power, you have to already pretty much know what you're looking for. Say that I want to find out the information for confusion. I'm pretty sure that it's a wizard spell, but I have no idea what its new level is. So I've got to flip through the book, hoping that my eye lights on the word "confusion" in the text. This increases wear and tear on the book, and it is frustrating.
Of course, it would help if there were a computer program out there that contained all this information, probably organized in a much more user friendly manner. Like the one that is being made available through D&DOnline.com. That is pretty ****ing pathetic, WotC guys. I can't think of another role-playing game company that has made subscribing to a website absolutely essential to playing the game. (And before you say it's not essential, can you find the information for the "confusion" spell from the information that I've posted? How long did it take you?)
The only similar case that I can think of is an instance where some information that was only available to subscribers to Pyramid was referenced in Transhuman Space, and I'm willing to bet that the article was made free in support of an SJGames product when the book came out, or soon after. (Hey, prove me wrong.) Seriously, if Wizards is that desperate for internet dollars, why not just distribute porn? I'm sure that there are hundreds if not thousands of frustrated (in many senses of the word) artists who would be thrilled to have people pay to download their elf-bondage fantasies.
Anyway. One could say that there's a similar problem in the chapter on equipment, which includes information on magical items. But in this case, at least, the information is arranged somewhat more logically. Each class of item (weapon, implement, armor, neck slot, ring, etc.) is in its own section, but while each section opens with a list of the items organized by their levels (which, logically, indicates what level a character has to be to create the item, as well as how much it costs) those lists are followed by alphabeticized information about each individual item. If you know what kind of item you're looking for -- and it's usually pretty obvious from the name what kind of item it is -- it's relatively easy to turn to the section in question and find it.
Okay. Heretofore, I've focused on the larger-scale, organizational problems of the book. But there are also a lot of little things that bug me about this new edition. Magic carpets are now one person rides. (That isn't true to the legend, nor even the now best-known Hollywoodized version of the legend, which has Aladdin and Jasmine on their repeated magic carpet rides.) The "knight commander" paragon path states that to take it, you must be proficient in heavy armor. Um ... do you mean all kinds of heavy armor? Requiring multiple feats, because there isn't one Armor Proficiency (heavy armor) feat anymore, and they also have prerequisites?
Alignment has undergone a retrograde step. We're now back to pretending that lawful good is "good plus" rather than "good minus", and that chaotic evil is a thousand times more evil than, you know, other kinds of evil. Non-evil chaotics and non-good lawfuls are both relegated to the category of "unaligned".
Skills are more binary now. If you're trained in a skill, you get 5 to rolls involving it. While you can take feats to increase that bonus (Skill Focus, and so forth) it's impossible to be less proficient in a given area without being less proficient in all the areas affected by that attribute. Perhaps a feat will be offered in some future rules expansion to fix that problem, but that ... well, this is how it makes me feel.
Me: I don't really want to be equally as good at all Intelligence-based skills, I'd like to be rather deficient in one.
Designer: Take a feat!
Me: Uh, okay, but doesn't that mean I'll be getting some advantage that I might not want?
Designer: Take a feat!
Me: Is your solution to everything to take a feat?
Designer: Take a feat!
Me: Stop saying take a feat or I will shoot you.
Designer: Take a fea--
Me:
Yeah.
Overall, I wasn't satisfied with the new edition. And I don't think that my expectations were too high, as they'd been steadily lowered by the previews over the last year. I've lived through five editions of this game (Basic D&D, Advanced D&D, 2nd Edition Advanced D&D, 3e D&D, and now let's-not-call-it-4e D&D) and this is the first one that felt like I wasn't reading something that had something in common with the red boxed game that I found under the Christmas tree more than twenty years ago. I don't know this game, and I'm not sure that the parts that I like about it are worth enduring the parts that I don't.
Not that it matters. However much I'd like to think otherwise, the avalanche has already begun, and it is far too late for the pebbles, like your humble author, to vote. This review is ultimately pointless, except for educative purposes -- no one is not going to buy this book based on my recomendation. It will sell well, regardless of how well it's organized, or how good or bad the system is. I mean, I bought it. I'll probably buy the other two core rulebooks. Maybe I'm the pathetic one, not the guys at Wizards.
Nah. We're all pretty pathetic.
