Fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons. It evokes a lot of feelings; it has fan boys (and girls) both for and against it. Where do I stand? Off to one side with my White Wolf fan boy tee shirt. I like what I like and so far I have been big on Old and New World of Darkness settings. I have a real love/hate relationship with 3.0 and 3.5, some days its fine and some days I cannot stand to be near it. So, for the record I figure I represent the "Undecided" crowd of players. Now, on with the show!
The Players Handbook
The book is handsome, make no mistake. It has a good looking cover of a Dragonborn and an Eladrin, the binding is sturdy and the book clearly defines that this is the core book for Divine, Martial and Arcane characters. The pages are nice full color pages, but it’s the kind that will smear with perspiration or any other dampness. The typesetting is nice and attractive, the pictures are well done and evocative of the material and the layout is pretty effective overall. At first glance it seems well done and professional.
The content of the books is also nicely laid out with some odd choices for structure but most of the changes make sense (at least to me anyway).
Chapter one is the usual fare on how the play the game, an example, and what to expect. What is unusual here is that the information is pretty complete and pretty new player friendly. D&D has always been one of the "Beginner" games that just about everyone cuts their teeth on, and this chapter is pretty refined in its definitions and explanations. I am pretty confident that a new player reading this section will be getting the crash course they need in Role-playing.
Chapter two is also a pretty comprehensive overview of character making. It does a good job of outlining what each attribute does as well as how it will affect your overall character. It outlines what needs to be done at each stage and how to find what you are going to need. This is followed by a copy of the character sheet with directions on how to find what you need for each section with the page numbers. I found this, overall, very helpful in decoding the rather complex looking character sheet. There were some odd choices for references, a few of this links should have pointed to different places in the book but overall it was very logical.
Chapter three is the races, and a controversial chapter it is. Gone is the Half-orc and Gnome and we welcome the Dragonborn (a draconic race that reminds me of Draconians from Dragonlance without the overly evil bend and explosive death results), the Tiefling (a half demon race), and a new type of elf the Eladrin (the fluff says that they and elves were once the same but when Elves adapted to the woods the Eladrin hold to their fey roots). To be honest the Gnomes never really stood out to me as different from Halflings and the idea of Half-Orcs did not seem mainstream enough to justify a complete race in the main book. Sorry die hard 3.X fans, I never liked those two and I am personally glad they are gone. On the other hand I don’t like the Eladrin for the same reason, do we really need arrogant elves and wild elves?
Each race also gets its own powers, there has been much said about the Eladrin’s perceived brokenness over its racial teleport power. After reviewing the many powers I don’t really see it as being that powerful in context. For example, the Dragonborn get breath weapons as an encounter ability and Half Elves get to take a class power and add it to their ability list (a sample character took an at will power, eye bite, from warlocks that did ranged damage and made them invisible until the end of their next turn). The long and the short of this Eladrin ability is that they avoid Attacks of Opportunity; I fail to see the brokenness of the ability. The racial abilities also seem to add some flavor to each race, overall I like their inclusion.
Chapter four is the second meatiest and is the longest in the book, this one covers classes. Each class has all its powers built in, no longer do we need to build fighters with feats nor do casters need to manage huge lists of spells. Each of these classes is connected to the three types being presented: Martial, Divine, and Arcane. Each class is also tailored to specific adventuring roles: Leaders, Defenders, Controllers, and Strikers. Your classic party of Cleric, Fighter, Rouge and Wizard fill these basic types and every class is linked to these sources and types. For the record the source is where your powers come from and your role determines how your powers are geared to work. Martial means you work hard and train to get your abilities, Divine powers are bestowed by your god(s), and Arcane powers are linked to some inner gift and magical training. Leaders tend to have powers that assist others in some way, Defenders have great defenses and powers that make them targets, Controllers have lots of crowd control and area powers, Strikers single out a single person and deal piles of direct damage to them. Each class write up takes about 20 pages (that includes advanced “Paragon” Classes, they give additional goodies as you continue to level up and specialize your character a little more) with all the powers and good stuff.
Each class has two or more “style” choices. A Ranger can be either a master archer or a dual wielding killing machine, once chosen it becomes a defining trait of your character. You then get some at will powers, encounter powers, and some daily powers in addition to some class specific abilities. The powers were a great idea that I really like, every class has some specific “things” that they can do whenever they get to take an action. They can either do them as many times as they want (at will), only do them once or twice until they take five (encounter), or only once until they rest for the day (daily). In addition they will get some less combat intensive abilities called Utility powers that may have combat applications but are mostly cool things they can that does stuff other than beat someone down. This makes the game more fun for the fighters as well as the wizards, in the past mages had to hold their spells for when they really needed them and spent the rest of the time lurking in the back. By the same token it can get boring just swinging the axe. In both cases the new abilities give the fighter something to do beyond hitting bad guys for the 100th time and it allows the mage to be more effective by doing what he does best (magic) nonstop.
Chapters Five and Six cover Skills and Feats, there are some major differences from 3.X but the basic concepts are the same. Skills are the mundane training for how to do something. The notable absence here is crafting, the book implies that if you want to make something and your DM figures you should be able to then it just takes time to get it right. How much is left for the DM to decide. Skills also differ in that you pick some skills to be “Trained”; this gives them a +5 to rolls and lets you do some advanced things you can’t otherwise attempt. The skill list is also greatly reduced, there are 17 skills total now. They do a good job of covering almost everything, again the implication is that if its not listed it was decided to be of limited importance to adventuring in general. Horsemanship, for example, was not important enough in a campaign for its own skill so you can now either make a Nature check (to calm a natural beast) or just not worry about it. If a class wants to use them more than as just transportation then they will include powers and modifiers to make horsemanship better for the class rather than worry about a skill that only a few classes might use.
Feats also get this less is more approach, so much of what was once feats are now built into character classes the list has changed dramatically. A lot of feats are now racial or class specific, for example there are different feats for each god the Cleric serves as a unique quality of that god. A few feats allow you to take qualities from another class and make it your own, this is one of the ways Multi-classing is being done now, the other is taking the other class instead of a Paragon class and slowly adding the abilities of that class to your own but it now costs four feats and can only be done at level 10, and it makes sense if all you want are some minor tweaks instead of dedication. In 3.X it’s the difference between taking a level of Fighter for some of the class features and taking ½ your class levels between two classes. Feats are also specific to the power level of the game: Heroic (1-10), Paragon (11-20), and Epic (21-30).
The next chapter is on equipment, nothing really earth shattering here except that magic items are now included. Again, good call on this as it makes the players handbook feel more complete since it now includes the common magic items. This chapter is followed by a chapter on adventuring in general, explaining why you might go hunting monsters and excitement. It also discusses quests and benefits from them.
And now we come to Combat, the meatiest and second largest chapter. Despite what you may have believed it really has not changed all that much! You still use a battle grid, but instead of calling in 5’ they just call it one square. Attacks of opportunity work just like before, you roll attacks just like before, you have AC/Fortitude/Reflex/Will defenses (except Fortitude, Reflex, and Will are now defenses instead of saves), and tactics are just as big as ever. There has been a lot of debate online about how playable the game is without minis and a map, the answer is just what you would expect: It’s the same as 3.X. If you could describe when attacks of opportunity should have been applied, if you could fairly determine who should and should not be in an AOE attack, and if you could keep everyone straight about combat without a map in 3.X you have nothing to fear. If you were house ruling this stuff out to make it easier to play you will still be house ruling it out. The combat system is streamlined in general with less actions and clearer examples but its not really a renaissance in game line, just about everything that was in there before is still here. I got a distinct “Nothing to see here” feel. Healing surges were a new bit though, the game now allows your class (its based by class) X number of surges per day. You can use one in a fight at a time, healing ¼ your total hit points, and they call this Second Wind. Outside of fights you can use as many as you want while taking five (as in a break). This adds a little more meat to the characters and allows you to gage how you are doing overall. When you’re out of surges they encourage you to rest. Eberron fans: Acton points now just give you another action, you only get one to start no matter what level you are, you get more when handle more than 2 encounters without resting for the day, and you now hold as many as you want but they all go away when you rest for the day (then your back to 1).
The last chapter discusses Rituals, this is the non combat abilities that anyone with the proper training can do. It takes time to do them, and a lot of money in materials, but nothing else aside from knowing the ritual. It seems pretty cool that anyone can do rituals like Raise Dead as long as they have the right training but I think that faith should factor into some of the Religion rituals and learning into the Arcane. Coming out of the gate this section is the most likely to be house ruled by me.
Overall the content in meaty and fresh, some sections more than others though. No examination of this iteration of the rules would be complete without some comment being made to the similarities between this game and an MMORPG. There are some similarities. There, I said it! There are some similarities between ALL fantasy MMORPG’s and real RPG’s though. The original idea behind a MMORPG is to make an online RPG game that others can participate in and share their experiences! To take the comparison further you can look at 3.X to Everquest: It was king of the hill in its day but it had some ugly flaws. Some things just did not make sense, no matter how you want to look at it, and some stuff just needed to be overhauled. Fighters swung their weapons and taunted, mages waited for the right moment, and rouges constantly jockeyed for the coveted back for stabbing (hmm, I know I said something about this earlier…) 4th edition is very similar to World of Warcraft, it takes a lot of the ideas that made its predecessor popular and cranks it to 11. Fighters get powers to pop, mages get more defined roles and abilities and rouges can do more than just wait for the time to be right. Are there still problems, sure! The basic ideas of both are the same, they both pander to the same audience and they both include elements that were obviously inspired to make the company more money (D&D Minis anyone?) It’s a fair comparison for 4th edition to be compared to a MMORPG but its also fair to acknowledge that if it makes the game more fun then why not include it? Daily abilities that slaughter bad guys is BAD A$$!! I applaud this thinking, it’s something that really adds more flavor and it sounds cooler to say “I am going to use Precise Shot to take that Goblin Down!” than “I roll to attack…15. Does that hit?”
Now that that has been addressed, on the play test! My group and I went to the Gameday celebration by Wizards in Seattle. We were the first in the doors and we got to sit down with Chris Perkins for our Dungeon Master and most of my players were there for the game. Each of them were on the fence (as was I) on the game as a whole, each of us with our own reservations about the new rules. None of us knew anything of the game aside from online teasers so we were all just hanging out and learning. For the record we did the adventure that had us looking for some kids kidnapped from town.
We started off with the puzzle; it took us a few minutes to figure out what they wanted. We then went down inside and had our first real battle with the sentries. We found the fire traps the hard way, but overall I found that the combat was only going slow due to us checking the sheets ever few minutes for what we could do and asking questions about how our stuff work (my daughter needed an explanation on Cleave 3 times before it sunk in, she could never play 3.X since she could not make heads or tails of what feats she should get) but by the time we got the kids we had a good grip on the system. I was playing the rouge and we found out that magical traps can be disarmed with Thievery! We also found out that desecrating magical traps may not be the way to go after all when I discovered that urine (and a failed skill check) did not work so well. The ensuing fight went much smoother and not only did we survive the fight but we also took down necromancer (? He summoned skeletons…) who kidnapped the kids.
I found the adventure was not impossible in its difficulty and it allowed for different resolutions than some of the cookie cutter dungeons that I had experienced in the past. Once we got the basics under out belt we all found our classes worked very well with each other when we embraced our roles and accepted our duties. The rules were almost invisible after a bit, after that first fight we all sort of knew what to expect. The dailies were every bit as cool as I had hoped, the rouge I was using dealt around 10 pts of damage on the average swing, after my daily (which allowed me to roll for sneak attack damage with a bonus) hit I think my next blow was around 26 pts, there were many congratulations and accolades to be had.
By the end of it everyone (including my 13 year old daughter) had purchased a book and were as excited to get them signed as I was. My group may have a few naysayers in it still (not everyone could attend) but we, as a group, are far more excited by 4th edition than we ever were about 3.X
And really, what higher praise is there?
Review Summary