 Goto [ Index ] |
I have run three different campaigns, all in the Heroic tier, using the D&D 4E rules since it released over two years ago. I paid for my own PHB.
I’m reviewing the physical book not the updates but the updates are many and because of a real need for the character builder, the updates will impact the use of the PHB. See Fill in the Numbers and Character Builder and Game Bits below for more details.
Stated Goals of the PHB: Does It Measure Up? Here is the stated goal of the PHB from page 4: You take on the role of a legendary hero—a skilled fighter, a courageous cleric, a deadly rogue, or a spell-hurling wizard. With some willing friends and a little imagination, you strike out on daring missions and epic quests, testing yourself against an array of daunting challenges and bloodthirsty monsters.
The PHB lives up to the second promise. A player will be hard pressed to find a more exciting, challenging, and fascinating game when it comes to fighting monsters using the created rules of the game designers.
In the hands of a skilled DM, D&D 4E combat plays out like the greatest scene from a fantasy novel or movie with the caveat that most players will be limited to doing what the game designers envision. Powers channel players into using predefined game effects and combining them rather than coming up with completely novel approaches.
The first promise, testing against and array of daunting challenges, falls through completely. The PHB contains very little to aid a player in any endeavor beyond combat.
The PHB is very rule oriented rather than roleplaying orientated. Chapter 2 has a brief overview of gods, alignment, and personality but none of these elements are given rules for additional weight except that each god has one feat dedicated to them for characters that can Channel Divinity.
There are no penalties for roleplaying outside of alignment or for disobeying the dictates of the gods. If a player chooses to play against the personality he selected for his character, there are no listed or expected game repercussions.
Character Creation: How Does It Work? A character made using the PHB consists of five main parts: race, class, skills, feats, and equipment (Chapters 3-7). Everything but skills may also provide access to additional powers. From page 54 of the PHB: Every class has access to a mix of attack powers (used to harm your enemies in combat, more or less directly)and utility powers (used to overcome a variety of obstacles both in and out of combat).
The rules explain that a character exists in the player’s imagination and suggest considering race, class, and even the supplied art in deciding on what race and class to play. I thought the idea of using art as a guide was an interesting idea, as I’ve been guided this way before but I haven’t seen it suggested before. Character creation usually starts with race and class.
A handy character creation list is provided. Roleplaying character details are listed last, even though the rules suggest imagining the character first.
From page 14: The first two decisions you make in character creation are picking your character’s race and choosing a class. Together, these describe your basic character concept… Your choice of character class also determines your character’s role—the job your character does when the adventuring party is in a fight. You should pick the race and class combination that interests you the most. However, sometimes it’s a good idea to first consider the role you want your character to fill.
A character in the PHB is defined most strongly by role followed by class with race a distant third. From page 15: Each character class specializes in one of four basic functions in combat: control and area offense, defense, healing and support, and focused offense. The roles embodied by these functions are controller, defender, leader, and striker.
Races Eight races are also included with the standard Tolkien races supplemented with the dragonborn and tiefling. The dragonborn are humanoid dragons; an honorable warrior race hatched from eggs and with breath weapons which make them a fascinating change from standard races. Tieflings are a mix of human and devil blood from an ancient, mostly forgotten ritual. They make many other races uncomfortable with their style and otherworldly air. They too are a nice change from the standard races.
The only race to suffer penalties is the halfling. Because it is small size, a halfling cannot use larger size weapons. No corresponding bonus offsets this disadvantage (halflings aren’t harder to hit because they are smaller and they don’t find it easier to hide).
Classes, Roles, and Power Sources Eight classes are provided but strangely there are not two roles each. Instead there are three strikers (ranger, rogue, and warlock), two defenders (fighter and paladin), two leaders (cleric and warlord), and one controller (wizard). In addition, three power sources are used: arcane, divine, and martial. There are two arcane classes (warlock and wizard), two divine (cleric and paladin), and four martial (fighter, ranger, rogue, and warlord). The power source is used in a few rules to determine if a character can do something, like use a wand.
Classes are further broken down into builds, a specific way to play a class. Most classes have two builds (the warlock has three). An example of builds for the ranger are the archer ranger or the two-blade ranger. While a ranger can take powers from either build, the class features each build provides favors either archery or melee attacks with two weapons respectively and will tend to channel a character strongly in one direction.
Whatever class the player picks at 1st level cannot be changed. For up to 30 levels, the player will be focused on the role their class fills.
Ability Scores After race and class are chosen and the role assigned, a player then generates ability scores, choosing from various methods to do so: a standard array of scores, assign points method, or random rolling using the classic 4d6 method. Players are not told to consult with their DM on which method to use, although it is noted on page 18: You can’t roll ability scores for a character you plan to use in RPGA® events.
Skills Skills come next. The skills in the PHB list various DCs to accomplish various tasks. These one shot DCs do not match up with the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. One infamous example: Opposed Check: Intimidate vs. Will (see the table for modifiers to your target’s defense). Success: You force a bloodied target to surrender.
Bloodied means a creature has reached half hit points. The first time a power gamer tries this on an inexperienced DM can make for an unpleasant experience. The DM has very little authority invested in him or her by the PHB, but allowing this skill to work as written will wreck a game. A DM has to make a judgment call on allowing the rule as written or overruling it as what is best for the game.
Players only have control over skills at 1st level when they pick what skills their character is trained in or when they take a feat relating to skills. Otherwise, the character just adds half level to all skills.
The skill list is incomplete for a fantasy RPG that lets players face daunting challenges. Riding falls under Nature: Handle Animal which means that fighters, paladins, and warlords cannot be skilled riders without spending a feat but wizards can be. Characters cannot be skilled in building items or running a business or sailing a ship or driving a wagon. If a character wants to do any of these things, the DM will have to make up rules to cover the situation.
Feats Feats follow next. From page 192: Most feats give you small, static bonuses to one of the numbers on your character sheet. At lower levels, many feats are difficult to qualify for due to high ability score restrictions.
Some of these restrictions make sense (strength for armor) and some seem completely random. For example, astral fire to increase fire and radiant damage inflicted from a power, requires a high dexterity score. Three classes likely to benefit from this feat (the cleric, paladin, and warlock) do not normally have high dexterity scores.
Feats can be chosen depending on the level of the character based on three tiers (see Character Advancement below for more on tiers). A character can take a few class features and a handful of powers from another class by taking multiclass feats.
Powers Powers are the heart of the PHB. Each class uses the same table to determine powers per level. Added to that are a few class features, some of which work as additional powers. Powers usually determine both attack and damage from one or two core abilities based on class. You can attack with charisma and do bonus damage as well for example.
Powers cover a wide range of tactical options but are very specific and almost all are completely fantastical. Players who like picking out combos and working powers together into a whole will not be disappointed. Players who want at least a feeling of historical verisimilitude or the option to improvise will not be satisfied.
Some of the powers are surprising. The ranger puts out the most damage, which is a striker role, but can also hit two opponents with many attacks making that class deadly.
The wizard actually has very low damage output but can hit many enemies at a time. The wizard also has many more utility feats (like cantrips) and gains rituals automatically.
The rogue and warlord have many powers that rely on what other characters do. Rogues especially do not consistently have the damage output strikers like the ranger can deal out. The rogue has many other interesting powers, many relating to movement, but doesn’t fit easily into the striker roll.
The fighter can do decent damage but many fighter powers do not have a miss effect instead being reliable (meaning a daily power that misses can be tried again rather than being used for the day). In practice, though, this means the fighter often does nothing on his turn if he misses and has to wait until his next turn to try to hit again while many other classes have many effects with powers, hit or miss. The fighter powers can be frustrating to use, especially in a large group of characters.
Equipment and Magic Items Equipment is provided for characters and it includes magic items. The section on magic items indicates that magic items are hard to buy but then goes on to say that “in general you can buy any item you can afford.”
An inexperienced DM may again be caught unawares when players start buying magic items since this practice is not a big part of most fantasy stories. The best option is to have players e-mail their character builder characters to the DM before each game to reduce surprises, but the PHB does not suggest this practice.
Mundane equipment has almost no value in 4E. In fact, characters can’t even sell mundane equipment at all under normal circumstances.
One twist on mundane equipment is that weapons have a proficiency bonus that adds to the melee or ranged attack of a wielder with a feat to use the weapon. A weapon user without the correct feat loses the proficiency bonus.
Fill in the Numbers (It is Step Nine, I Didn’t Make It Up!) Math is the next step in character creation and there is a lot of it, even at 1st level. Without the character builder, most players will not be able to run characters successfully.
However, the character builder will generate characters with many different rules that don’t match those in the PHB. Wizards updates the builder every month and many, many rules change.
Some DMs will pick a date to buy the character builder and not use updates after that. Otherwise, it will cost money to have continuing monthly updates and the PHB will become less and less effective.
If you want to go straight PHB, prepare for a lot of number crunching and a lot of writing down of powers and magic items.
Roleplaying Roleplaying is the final step of character creation which seems odd. Most roleplaying games encourage players to use roleplaying to guide them in the character creation process, but not in the PHB. Role, class, and race instead guide character creation before the player decides on some basic roleplaying fluff that is otherwise unconnected to the other rules (with the exception of gods and the one feat tied to each one for divine characters).
Rituals Rituals are like powers but cost a feat, money, and time to use rather than being granted by level. Rituals are associated with a skill. Any class can take a feat to use rituals.
Character Builder and Game Bits Without the character builder, minis or tokens, and a battle map, the PHB is nearly impossible to use in play. Trying to play a character without the number crunching power of the character builder will be impossible for the majority of players. And with all the short teleports, pushing, pulling, and sliding of many powers; the game cannot be easily played without a battle map and minis or tokens.
If you plan to use the character builder the PHB rules will be hopelessly outdated. You will need to decide if you are going to use a one-time upgrade or a monthly upgrade to the rules in your book. You cannot pick and choose the updates to your character builder; it is all the updates provided for the current month or no update at all. However, you can pick and choose which rulebooks and online magazines to allow or not allow.
Combat The majority of rules beyond character creation in the PHB revolve around combat. While each character can make basic melee and ranged attacks as well as a handful of predefined other attacks, the most effective option is to use a power.
An encounter will take about an hour to complete with a DM that moves things along. Combat will likely last four rounds or more. Characters will not only attack, but also move around quite a bit to take advantage of terrain (the DM can place terrain that provides game benefits as well as the standard cover, concealment, and difficult terrain), and spend time healing.
The addition of tactical movement and the second wind (any character can take a moment to recover hit points without the use of a power) to attacks adds to the cinematic feel of combat. Good stories involve not just attacks but also interesting locations, running combats and chases, and pauses where a hero or villain stops to catch their breath. The PHB excels at helping players paint these vivid mind scenes.
An advantage of the long combat round is that mistakes are lessened for inexperienced players. A player doesn’t have to pick the very best option every round or face doom, so the DM can encourage picking up the pace a bit and just making a quick choice as what to do next. Powers actually aid in this case, as a player not sure what to do can just pick a power and try it out rather than have to make a careful decision every round, thereby slowing down the game.
Combat run this way is fast-paced which gives the game a feel of a great combat scene from a fantasy novel or movie. However, this style of combat also tends to channel players almost exclusively into using the powers as designed and can stifle creative solutions in combat. A DM will need to purposefully challenge this paradigm if they want out of the box thinkers in combat.
Character Advancement Characters can advance to 30th level in the game. The levels are broken into three tiers: heroic (1-10), paragon (11-20), and epic (21-30).
Most characters advance after ten encounters. A major quest counts as one encounter and the most difficult of skill challenges also counts as a full encounter. Minor quests count as defeating one monster (or one-fifth the XP of a major quest).
An encounter usually takes about an hour to run. Characters can expect to advance one level about every two adventures if a typical game night runs for five hours.
A useful checklist is provided that explains how to gain a level. Seven steps are followed.
In addition, retraining is part of the rules. Players can change one skill, feat, or power choice from a previous level.
At paragon level, the characters pick a paragon class which supplements their starting class. Most classes have four choices but warlocks have only one option from three depending on the chosen build. Characters are more likely to be able to fly, teleport, and travel the planes at paragon level.
At epic level, the characters pick an epic destiny. Only four are provided to choose from. Death becomes almost impossible at epic levels. After 30th level, the character is retired from play with the epic destiny indicating a form of immortality the character might achieve (becoming a god, joining with the arcane sphere and becoming a “named” wizard, or having a name that lives on forever as a legend or a curse).
Value of the PHB The PHB is hard to assign a value to. For exciting tactical combat, it excels. But it isn’t a minis game; it is touted as a roleplaying game. And beyond combat, the PHB fails to provide for the basic needs of many fantasy RPG players. No adequate rules are provided for building items or castles, running businesses, sailing, using wagons, or much else outside of combat.
In addition, players are channeled into the narrow focus of combat and non-combat encounters. The powers revolve around these two options. Also, since the powers are such an integral part of the game, it is hard to move to a larger passage of time (days, weeks, months, or years) in which to resolve events.
Finally, players are encouraged to solve problems by using the predefined powers. Most of the intriguing plots players may be encouraged to hatch may be stifled by the plethora of powers and the options they present. In other words, the flashy effects the game designers provide may well distract a player away from other problem solving solutions.
The PHB earns a 2 aiding players and their character in facing daunting challenges and a 4 for preparing them to battle bloodthirsty monsters. Averaged, the final score is a 3. If referenced for use with the character builder, the value would drop to a 2 as the PHB is hopelessly outdated. However, a player needs it for the definitions it provides of conditions and for the base rules (at least those that haven’t been changed). A DM also must have the book for the base rules.
The PHB reads like a text book and is arranged like one as well, which is not a positive style. And there are many, many online updates to the standard text. The art is good however but not inspiring. A final style score is a solid 3 with the decent art boosting up the otherwise boring text and layout.
Conclusions If you like intricate, detailed, tactical combat with predefined options and the chance for combos that plays as if you are in a movie then the PHB is a good start for you. If you prefer to think on your feet, talk your way out of problems, and generally do things other than engage in combat, then the PHB is not for you unless your DM (or you as the DM) can make up many of these rules.
