When the much-anticipated and dreaded fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons was announced at Gencon last year, I was both apprehensive and optimistic. At the con, WotC made the announcement with the aid of a humorous short film that featured a guy (unaccountably speaking in a cheesy French accent) going over the history of D&D and some of its shortcomings. Fourth Edition was coming, we were told, and though there would be changes, it would still be the old D&D that we loved so much, only much, much BETTER.
I think that as the months went by and I read more and more about what was planned, optimism began to win out over apprehension. Simplifying and streamlining combat? Check. Cleaning up clunky rules like grappling? Check! Reducing the number of skills? Check!! Refining character classes so that everyone always had something to do, and wizards didn't have to just sit around once their spells were exhausted? Check and double check. Make clerics more than just walking first-aid stations? Enthusiastic double check! No more confirming critical hits? Triple check!
But other rumors troubled me. No more prestige classes; their role was to be occupied by something called "paragon paths" and they were no longer optional. No more iterative attacks? After some consideration I decided that this was okay with me -- iterative attacks were fun, but they slowed things down considerably. Fourth Edition would finally show Vancian magic the door? I agreed and supported this, but Vancian magic was such an integral part of the old D&D experience, I was concerned about what might replace it. Gnomes no longer a PC race? Well, I never played gnomes, but many of my friends did, so I didn't like this at all. Same for half-orcs.
I was willing to wait and see. I preordered my books, read all the articles, talked and speculated, and waited.
And now here it is. After almost a solid year, what's the result? Is it still the D&D we knew and loved as teenagers, only BETTER?
At first glance, Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, while a beautiful and admirable piece of work seems to be a game that narrows choices, reduces the flexibility of 3E and largely forces us to play the way that its designers think we should. This lack of flexibility seems almost impossible to overcome and is largely built into the rules. Whether this represents a giant step back or a giant step forward is largely up to the individual.
I'm not saying that 4th Edition is a bad game. It is in fact quite a good one, and features many innovative and creative new rules, revisions and streamlining of old ones, and the complete elimination of still other game features that had grown stale and boring. But in doing so, how much have the designers changed D&D, how many choices have they taken from the players, and how much does it resemble the game that we have played and loved since 1973?
When I behold the wonder that is the Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the phrase that most often crosses my mind is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Certainly some elements of "old" D&D were broken beyond repair and needed to be replaced. Certainly a reboot and rewrite was justifiable and even necessary. But as I thumb through the new rulebooks and see what changes have been wrought, I wonder why WotC's designers chose to change so much.
I've dithered over what numeric reviews to give this game. In the end, I settled on the current 4/4 rating, though this will vary depending on your overall feelings about the changes that Fourth Edition made. If you agree, you may even give it a 4/5 or a 5/5. If you disagree, you might even think you wasted your money. My rating is subjective in the extreme, and even I am not 100% sure about it.
There's no question that WotC's Third Edition of D&D made wholesale, sweeping changes to the original. Earlier editions of D&D seemed clunky and cobbled-together, as if the designers invented new rules systems while lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling, then slapped them into the game the following day. Let's face it -- 2E's logic was lacking (roll high to hit in combat, but roll low for saving throws; high hit points are good, while high Armor Class is bad), and game balance was either ignored or was crammed into silly kluges (vastly immortal and wise elves couldn't advance beyond 7th level as fighters, supposedly to "balance" the fact that they got better stat rolls than humans). Second Edition featured rule variants such as character "kits" were almost all flavor with no real rules-based distinctions, a clumsily-titled "non-weapon proficiencies" (i.e. "Skills") system that no one ever used, a headache-inducing combat bonus system that gave weapons different modifiers depending upon what type of armor their target was wearing, and of course the ten most obscure medieval polearms, a tribute to D&D's creator's special field of study that provided the gaming world with the "glaive-guisarme," the "fauchard-fork," the "guisarme-voulge" and the "Bohemian ear-spoon." To be fair, the ear-spoon was actually found in 1E, but why let the facts get in the way of a good joke?
Third edition cleaned up much of the illogic and unified the game behind a single mechanic. Roll a d20, add the appropriate bonus, compare it to a difficulty, and bingo, you're playing Dungeons and Dragons. Though I do know a number of gamers who refuse to abandon Second Edition, most of the world moved to 3E (and later the ill-timed and totally unnecessary 3.5E), for despite changes to the rules, it retained the flavor of the original, and kept enough of its old concepts to allow us to do such things as convert Second Edition characters to Third with relative ease.
Anyway, as anyone reading this review can attest, Third Edition had a wide and unprecedented influence on an industry that had grown moribund. Though it had some bad effects (a flood of really, really bad d20 supplements, for example), most were overwhelmingly good (a smaller flood of really, really GOOD d20 supplements). Now Fourth Edition rears its head, and a decade of cultural, economic and technological changes come into play.
The newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons is a shiny, pretty package for the Internet generation. It's D&D in a world where playing fantasy characters online is not only acceptable, it's downright mainstream. Perhaps World of Warcraft borrowed concepts from Dungeons and Dragons, but now at last we have come full circle, and it's time for D&D to borrow from WoW. And oh, how it borrows.
When talk began of the new edition, rumors were rife. Oh, they're going to destroy D&D and make it a computer game. They're going to require you to use miniatures. They're going to demand a pint of blood before you can buy the new books. They're going to end the OGL. And so on. I didn't put stock in most of these rumors, preferring to wait and see what happened. The fourth edition, I believed, would be a refinement and an improvement over the old version, but as Mister French-accented WotC spokesman at Gencon clearly said, it would still be the D&D we loved. Only better.
Interestingly enough, many of the rumors were at least partially true. The new edition all but requires the use of miniatures, and the OGL has been scrapped in favor of what is reportedly a far more restrictive license that eliminates the ability to make wholesale changes or adaptations to the rules.
I can however say with confidence say that D&D has not been turned into an online game. But the new edition's designers (Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt, Mike Mearls and Stephen Schubert) have done everything they can to make it look and feel exactly like an MMORPG, to such an extent that they have made a completely new game that still vaguely resembles D&D, but now has as much in common with Everquest and Lineage as with its celebrated predecessor. It's slick and pretty, with action-packed pictures, lots of cool powers, and an emphasis on the visual rather than the cerebral. Bright colors, lots of blood, overwritten power descriptions with silly names ("Swirling Leaves of Steel" anyone?) and constant reminders that your PCs are the personification of coolness (just like your MMORPG characters!) are among the new edition's guiding principles.
The differences between D&D's Third and Fourth Editions are every bit as extensive and wholesale as those between Second and Third. Despite its changes, Third Edition was recognizably "Dungeons and Dragons." Whether the same can be said for Fourth Edition is debatable. On first blush, it appears to be designed for kids raised on the Internet and console games, who like shiny things with lots of buttons. This is the generation whose parents told them that they were special, precious little snowflakes, and in their lexicon, "special" means "better than everyone else." They are the generation in which everyone's a winner, and everyone gets a trophy just for playing. In Fourth Edition, there's no such thing as standing back and letting someone else get a moment in the spotlight. It's everyone or no one. We're all special. We're all superheroes.
And what's wrong with that? Well, nothing really. But is it D&D? I think a case can be made that it isn't. In leveling the playing field, giving everyone something to do, and giving everyone special awesome powers, the designers run the risk of making the wondrous seem mundane, and the remarkable ordinary. Who cares if I can shoot lightning bolts from my fingertips when the fighter next to me can unleash a fury of blows that smash our enemies to a fine red mist? One could suggest that if we're all special, then none of us are special. Time will tell whether this turns out to be the case with the new edition.
Look and Feel
Physically, the new books are works of rpg art. They are beautifully bound with mask-varnished covers, strong binding and vivid colors. Inside, colors are used effectively to help the DM or player quickly locate needed information -- At-Will powers are headlined in green boxes, encounter powers in red and daily powers in black. Magic items have gold-colored boxed headlines. Most information needed for play is all in one place and relatively easy to find. Regrettably, this new squeaky-clean format is more reminiscent of a college textbook than a game that champions exciting medieval fantasy adventures and heroic quests.
The art is, unsurprisingly, the kind of art you'd find on the box of an online computer game. Lots of movement, action, swordplay, people yelling, monsters snarling. Never a dull moment, really, continuing the suggestion that the new D&D is a game of constant movement and frenetic action. Of course, the art in previous editions emphasized action as well, but that focus is even greater here, to the extent that after a time all the blood and violence start to blur together in an effect similar to what you'd get if you watched Jet Li movies for 36 hours straight.
The writing is basic and to the point, as good rules writing should be. The game and its rules are explained in straightforward fashion, though the actual meaning of some terms (such as "bloodied") is hard to determine, and often buried in different places. It's an old problem with rulebooks, and it's no worse than some, much better than others. The index, a feature often lacking in other games, is relatively complete and useful, though it does have the occasional irritating omission.
The DMG is the real gem of the collection. It's what the DMG should have been all along -- a book full of advice and guidelines for running the game. Rules are kept to a minimum, limited to information on such topics as trap statistics and upgrading monsters that only the DM should know. Magic items are in the PHB where, frankly, they do a lot more good. In addition to my more critical comments about the tone of the game, I must also say that the DMG is an excellent and useful volume and its author James Wyatt deserves praise for his work.
The Monster Manual is crammed full of creatures both old and new. And "crammed" is certainly the word, for with a few exceptions the designers kept the monster descriptions down to a single page. There are variations on each monster type, geared toward many different levels of play. There are, for example, "minion" class monsters that have but a single hit point, designed specifically so that (in the words of the DMG) "players get to enjoy carving through the mob like a knife through butter, feeling confident and powerful." There are also controllers, skirmishers, soldiers, elites, leaders and so on, all with different abilities and roles.
The problem is that in shrinking monsters down to a single page while at the same time expanding them to include several different challenge levels, much of the flavor and background about the creatures is lost. Some get more than others. Beholders, one of the most original and celebrated of D&D monsters, get a single sentence of description ("Few monsters evoke greater terror than the dread beholder, an avaricious tyrant that fires terrible rays from its eyestalks.") while minotaurs get two full pages and four paragraphs of background/flavor text. In many cases these seem less like well-rounded creatures with cultures or histories or legends and more like brightly-colored 3-D rendered opponents for your awesomely badass characters to chop up.
This brevity makes for the occasional glitch as well. Rather than text or read-out-loud descriptions of the monsters, often the only way we know what a creature looks like is by looking at its illustration. The description of a sahuagin baron, for example, states that it "relies on baron's fury, making good use of his exta limbs." What? The sahuagin baron has extra limbs? Where else does it say that? And if it has extra limbs, how many does it have? The only way of knowing for sure is to look at the illustration at the bottom of the page, which sure enough shows a baron with two extra limbs. If there was more space devoted to the actual descriptions of these creatures rather than their stat blocks, there would be room to specify such information and so avoid confusion.
What's the Same?
Elements of the previous edition remain. We still have classes, but their structure is radically different. We still have races, but many are unrecognizable and two traditional races (gnomes and half-orcs) have been eliminated. We still have levels, though how you advance has grown more rigid and provides less flexibility. We still have Skill checks, but they are greatly simplified, and we still have hit points though they are fixed and not anywhere near as variable.
The heart of the previous edition, the d20 mechanic, remains intact. To do something, you roll a d20, add the appropriate modifier, and match it against a difficulty determined by your DM. If you roll high you succeed, if you roll low you fail. Simple as that, and that at least has not changed.
Many of the other trappings of the game -- monsters, dungeons, magic items -- remain as well, though all have a certain sheen to them that reflects the design philosophy behind the new game. They are old school D&D as filtered through the lens of the MMORPG player, the computer geek and millennium kids. D&D is supposed to be "fun" and "fun" means it has to play quickly and smoothly and no one can ever be bored sitting at the table.
And due to this philosophy -- admirable in some ways, and short-sighted in others -- much of what remains seems quite different from the D&D we've been playing for the past decade or so. In revising and streamlining the game, I'm fearful that the designers may have lost sight of what made Third Edition D&D what it was. My chief concern in studying Fourth Edition is that it's just a new fun toy for the Internet generation that is to 3E D&D what Linkin Park is to the Ring of the Nibelung.
My beef with the new edition isn't related to its merits as a game. It's more that the designers appear to have been given free reign to rip out anything that might cause their new audience of ADHD-afflicted millennium babies to grow bored, give up on D&D and go play World of Warcraft. God knows, we have to keep our target audience away from the computer (unless of course it's to log onto their accounts at dndinsider.com). Subtlety, pure roleplaying encounters, talking or doing anything not related to combat often seems subordinate to kicking monster ass using your cool and awesome powers.
What's Different?
I've already mentioned some of the major changes in passing. Here, in more detail, are the major alterations and how significant they seem to me.
Player Classes: In this incarnation of the rules we have cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, warlock, warlord and wizard. You've been aching to play a gnome bard in the spanking new 4th Edition rules? You're out of luck, at least until they publish the appropriate splat. Same for the druid, the barbarian and the monk, all of whom have been excised from this edition. It's a shame, but the only ones I really miss are the bard and the druid. The others, though fun and useful, always seemed more like supplement material to me.
The new warlord and warlock classes are clever, but frankly neither really sets my imagination on fire. The warlock ("The pacts are complete. The rites have concluded. The signs are dawn in blood, and the seals are broken. Your destiny beckons..." -- though most of 4E's prose is simple and informative, it does have its vividly purple moments) relies on pacts that he's made with supernatural beings such as the fey or demons, but in the end he basically gets at-will, encounter and daily spells just like a wizard. The paragon path for this class (see below) helps it come into its own and distinguish itself from its spell-slinging wizard cousin.
The warlord, on the other hand (The epigrammatic quote at the beginning of the section -- "Onward to victory! They cannot stand before us!" -- makes the warlord sound kind of like a die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter, but I'll let it pass) is kind of a living buff dispenser, most of whose powers involve enhancing an ally's combat abilities. While this sounds fun, I can see the poor warlord falling into the cleric trap, i.e. being around just to enhance others and help them and doing very little for himself. Still in all, a nifty idea, and particularly frustrating if your enemies happen to have a warlord themselves.
Powers: At the heart of the new system are character powers. Picture the unfortunate wizards in previous editions, particularly those of low level. He or she can cast a couple of spells per session, then gets to lurk in the background and roleplay while the fighters and rogues get to take the fight to the enemy. There is nothing more useless, morbid or dreary than a low-level wizard who has cast all of his/her spells, believe me. The new edition goes a long way toward addressing this disparity, as well as many others, in a very entertaining and innovative way.
One of the guiding philosophies behind 4th Edition D&D appears to be the notion of party roles. Everyone in a well-balanced dungeon party has a part to play, and should be able to play it for the entire game. A cleric needs to do more than simply heal, a rogue more than pick locks, a wizard more than cast spells, etc. Everyone wants to do cool stuff. Fourth Edition lets you do so damned much cool stuff, however, that it starts to get slightly silly.
D&D 4th Edition introduces the concept of Powers. These are essentially neat little actions that are defined as At-Will (i.e. every turn), Encounter (once per combat) and Daily. Fighters and Rangers get "Exploits," Wizards get "Spells," Clerics get "Prayers," etc., but they're all essentially the same thing. Less potent powers get Encounter or At-Will status, while the really big stuff you only get to do once per day. Powers are further subdivided into Attack powers (used in combat, natch), and Utility powers, which don't directly affect your attacks and can often be used in non-combat situations.
Everything a Class does fits into this model. A 1st-level fighter can use "Reaping Strike" at will. This means that even if he misses, he still inflicts half of his Strength bonus as damage. Once per encounter a 10th level fighter can invoke the "Last Ditch Evasion" utility to avoid all damage at a cost of a -2 to all defenses for one round. At 15th level a fighter can use the daily "Dragon's Fangs" power to inflict triple damage if he hits, and half damage even if he misses.
And here is where Vancian magic falls off the mapboard. Spells and Prayers are now Powers. A wizard can use Magic Missile every turn, at will. It's never expended, never needs to be re-memorized, no spellbooks are required, no study, no scroll scribing, etc., etc. Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap... Every round. Forever. A cleric can "cast" Shield of Faith once per day, providing the cleric and every ally in range with a +2 bonus to AC. The old Vancian model persists (sort of) in the form of Rituals (see below), but for the most part it's dead as the passenger pigeon and about as likely to return to life.
Everyone gets powers. Everyone has something slightly cool they can do every round, something moderately cool they can do every combat, and something awesomely cool (relatively) that they can do once per day. And that's just at first level.
From a gaming standpoint, powers are great. No more munching on chips, reading a book, playing on the DM's X-Box or watching TV because you're all out of spells. No more sitting in the back rank waiting for someone to need healing. No more falling back and letting the fighters handle all the cool stuff. Powers address a serious deficiency in the D&D model, and do so successfully.
But is it D&D? I don't know. In the "old" model, you start off kind of powerless and gain huge amounts of power and influence as you rise in level. In this case, you start off kick-ass and as the game progresses you grow MORE kick-ass. Everyone is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The standard D&D party begins to remind me of the Army of the Land of Oz, where there were many generals and only one private. To my own surprise I found myself feeling slightly uncomfortable about the concept of powers. Go figure.
Rituals: While combat and utility spells have been folded into the new Powers system, as noted the old Vancian system is not entirely dead. Spells such as Gentle Repose, Knock, Phantom Steed, Raise Dead, etc., live on as rituals, which are more complex magical ceremonies that take time, preparation and effort. In fact, much of the old spellcasting system has been incorporated into ritual. Ritual books contain rituals, and a ritual takes up a number of pages equal to its level, they have material and somatic components, they can be found on scrolls, etc., etc., etc. There are some differences -- you don't memorize rituals, you just read them, and this can take anywhere from minutes to hours depending upon complexity. You then make an appropriate skill check (usually against Arcana or Religion) to see if the ritual succeeds. It usually does, but the higher you roll the better. Scrolls are cheaper but crumble to dust once the ritual is complete, while books hang around. Books can be created, but the rituals must be copied from other ritual books (not scrolls), which begs the question how the first ritual books were created, but this is D&D so we don't ask such things.
The big difference regarding rituals is that anyone can do them, as long as you have the book or scroll and the Ritual Caster feat. Clerics and Wizards receive this feat as a bonus, while others have to actually take it. You need training in Arcana or Religion in order to take the feat, but once you've got it, baby, you can cast rituals and it doesn't matter whether you're a warlord, a rogue or a fighter. With the help of ritual magic, everyone can cast like a 3.5 edition wizard.
Iterative Attacks: Gone, gone, gone. A few powers and feats allow more than one attack per round, but for the most part the days when your 15th level fighter could make three attacks per round are over, never to return. Yeah, it speeds up combat, and yeah it requires a lot less math. I can't say that I miss them too much, but the flavor that they brought to the game is gone. Do the new powers make up for the loss? That will be up to the greater gaming public.
Healing Surges: Did I say clerics were no longer walking first aid stations? That's because now PCs can heal themselves. No need for potions, no need for clerics, you just use the "Second Wind" action to spend a "healing surge" and presto! You get a quarter of your hit points back. Second Wind is equivalent to an Encounter power, so you can only do this once per combat, but other classes (such as the Cleric) have powers that enable you to spend a healing surge without taking an action. Still other powers enable you to heal without even burning a surge. Once out of combat you can spend as many surges as you want.
PCs have a limited number of healing surges per day. A cleric gets seven plus his/her Con bonus. A fighter gets nine plus Con bonus, etc. Fortunately they don't go up with levels, but remain at a relatively fixed point. A fighter with a Con of 16 gets 12 surges a day, meaning that he can lose all of his hit points three times. DMs should be prepared to put the PCs through the wringer lest they abuse the ready availability of healing surges. In the end, these surges free up the Cleric and have essentially the same effect as multiple healing potions and other kluges currently used to keep parties from being wiped out.
Again, while it's an elegant and cool idea and eliminates a lot of the problems of "old" D&D, I find myself wondering whether healing surges simply make the game too easy. There's also the question of exactly what healing surges represent -- are you applying first aid to yourself? Drawing on your chi? Focusing and wishing with all your might? Since no one's really sure what hit points really are, the addition of healing surges makes the game a little harder to visualize as anything more than a computer simulation.
Action Points: As if powers and healing surges aren't enough, the concept of Action Points has now been permanently enshrined. Fourth Edition D&D's version of action points isn't quite as versatile as those used in other d20 systems such as Mutants and Masterminds, D20 modern and Star Wars, however. An action point is just that -- you can spend one AP per encounter and in doing so gain an extra action. It doesn't allow any rerolls or do-overs, it just gives an extra action. Also they do not regenerate, so once you've spent an AP it's gone forever. APs are gained when you level up, or when you reach a "milestone."
Aha, milestones! That sounds like some cool roleplaying concept, such as achieving a personal goal, or acting in accordance with some personality trait or flaw, as in other games. Nope. A milestone simply means "completing two encounters without taking an extended rest." Yes, it says that in the DMG. One encounter, two encounters, bingo! Refreshed Action Point. That's a bit too simplistic for my tastes.
Combat: The basic mechanics of combat remain intact, and a 3rd Edition DM should have no problem adapting. Combat is quicker and more stripped down, which on the surface seems great. In some ways, however, it seems to me that the designers want to turn D&D into an all-combat game that features elaborate melee battles with a thin plot to string them together, kind of like an rpg version of "300," only without the gay subtext.
Most of the character powers relate to combat. They're called "attack" powers, after all, and they're at the heart of the new system. Other features are intended to streamline combat and make it faster and easier, which is a noble goal, though the intended result runs the risk of turning D&D into a skirmish wargame.
Enemies can now be "marked." What this represents I'm not sure, but some classes can use this ability to "mark" an opponent, which means that any attacks they make on opponents other than the one who marked them are at a -2 penalty. This really points up the MMORPG influence, as it resembles the "taunting" ability from Everquest and related online games, and is one sign of the designers' influences; if you "mark" an enemy he's really not going to have much choice but to attack you unless he really doesn't want to hit all that bad (or if he's got a large enough bonus that he can afford a -2 penalty).
I can't find any suggestion that monsters can "mark" PCs, which strikes me as terribly unfair and more of that "The PCs are superheroes" attitude that permeates this edition. As with Healing Surges, I really don't understand what actual physical process "marking" is supposed to represent, but since it exists in MMORPGs I guess it must be okay, huh? Marking targets doesn't fix any obvious problems, and for the most part leaves me cold.
Miniatures are even more important in this edition, as encounters are carefully described and mapped out ahead of time, with locations, move distances and battlefield conditions clearly delineated. Many combat tactics (such as attacks that "slide" enemies back one or more squares) simply won't work as well if you DON'T use miniatures, and movement is all listed in squares rather than linear measurement. Okay, WotC... I get the message. You want me to buy D&D miniatures, don't you?
"Bloodied" status is another innovative idea, but doesn't seem as well implemented as healing surges and powers. From early reports I thought that "bloodied" status imposed penalties on a PC or monster that lost half of its hit points. I find no reference to this anywhere in the rules -- now, bloodied can trigger certain power effects, make some attacks more effective, or (as in the case of dragonborn PCs) provide attack bonuses to the bloodied individual. The effects of being bloodied are all over the map and I'm afraid that they'll be hard to keep track of. I'd have preferred that hit point loss impose progressive penalties, as is the case in the Star Wars Saga Edition.
Skills: There are now 17 skills where once there were over 40. Many old skills have been incorporated into the new ones. The plethora of Knowledge skills are now replaced by Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Nature and Religion. That's all you get, but I suspect that's all you really need. Escape Artist has been folded into Acrobatics; Climb, Swim and Jump are now part of Athletics; Handle Animal and Survival (as "Forage") are included in Nature; Perception replaces Spot, Listen and Search; Thievery covers the old skills Disable Device, Open Lock, Sleight of Hand and Pickpocket. Gather Information is now Streetwise, which covers the old functions plus others such as "what's going on, who the movers and shakers are, where to get what you need," and so on.
Some old skills -- Appraise, Disguise, Perform, Profession, Craft, etc. -- have not been included in the new skill list and are non-combat related. Again, it seems like concepts that had purely roleplaying applications have been somewhat short-changed in favor of kicking ass in miniatures-oriented combat encounters.
For example, where's Perform? It will no doubt be included in the Bard class as a power when they bother to splatbook it (along with the druid, monk and sorcerer), but what happens to a character such as mine who was both a dancehall performer and a fighter/rogue? What if a wizard wants to sing or dance? And are we going back to the old notion that if you're not of a given class, you can't do anything that that given class can do? The minimization of non-combat skills and the expansion of others reinforces the notion that the game is about conflict and miniatures instead of roleplaying.
Also, the old "skill rank" system has been scrapped in favor of "Trained" status for certain skills. As before, the bonus for a skill check is equal to the associated Attribute, such as Dexterity for Stealth and Charisma for Bluff. Now, however, there are no skill ranks. Instead, you get a bonus equal to half your level, as well as a +5 bonus for any skills you're trained in. Fourth Edition simplifies skill selection, but does so at the cost of flexibility and choice.
As with combat, there are bright spots about skills that may yet save the game from being one long melee encounter. Among the rules included in the DMG are skill challenges, possibly the best example of why the DMG is such an outstanding document. Essentially skill challenges codify what we've been doing all along -- in order to accomplish a given task, PCs need to accumulate a certain number of successes. The DC and number of these successes depends upon the difficulty of the task. Not only does the DMG provide details of how to craft a good skill-based encounter, it provides several examples, all of which are a real boon to the Fourth Edition DM.
The fear here is the same as it always has been -- that with such codification, skill challenges will degenerate into endless die rolling, devoid of creativity or real roleplaying. Hopefully DMs will be able to avoid such things, but these rules give skills more concrete application and may make up for the evisceration of the old skill list.
What's New for No Apparent Reason, or Simply: Why?
While many of the changes wrought upon our precious D&D game are for the better, or at least have understandable rationales, more than a few left me scratching my head in perplexity. To my limited vision these changes do little to improve or streamline the game and have no real explanation other than the designers wanted it that way.
Player Races: One of my biggest WTF moments comes with the new "standard" races. As discussed before, gnomes are gone, and probably not mourned by many. Yet gnomes were a real cornerstone of the old game, even though no one had any idea what to do with them (depending on what edition you were using, a gnome's favored class was either bard or wizard/illusionist, which should tell you just how schizophrenic the whole thing was). Now they're gone and although we're assured that they'll return in a future splatbook, their presence is sorely missed. The same can be said for half-orcs, who are also absent from the list of "official" 4E player races.
Likewise, the addition of dragonborn ("Play a dragonborn if you want to look like a dragon," the PHB tells us), the tiefling, and, most puzzling, the eladrin, all make me wonder what the heck these people were thinking. The old races (elf, dwarf, human, gnome, half-orc) were iconic fantasy races with roots in folklore and popular literature. Dragonborn, tieflings and eladrin are... What? PC races invented specifically for D&D, that's what. Dragonborn originated in "Races of the Dragon," tieflings in the old "Planescape" setting and eladrin appeared, in vastly different form, in the 3.5 Monster Manual ("mighty champions of good" who came in two flavors -- bralani, who could transform into whirlwinds and ghaele who could become "incorporeal globes of eldritch energy;" neither power is apparent in their 4E incarnation, though there are depowered versions of the two flavors in the new MM).
Coupled with the demotion of elves to "eladrin kin who dwell in deep forests" the rise of these mysterious eladrin is inexplicable. Fourth Edition elves are what used to be called "wood elves," while eladrin appear to be what we used to call "high elves." Eladrin get +2 to Dex and Intelligence, low-light vision, +1 to Will defense, +5 vs. charm effects, don't have to sleep and get a racial encounter power called fey step, a short-range teleport. Elves, on the other hand, get +2 to Dex and Wisdom, low-light vision, +1 to perception checks, wild step and an encounter power called Elven Accuracy that allows them to reroll failed attacks.
Well, whoopty-freakin-do. The graceful high elves of old have been replaced by the clunkily-named "eladrin" and by a bunch of tree-dwellers. Yes, it's an aesthetic change to be sure, but I really, really wonder why it was necessary, how it enhances the game, and why, oh why, the "old" classification of elves was so vile and unworkable that we had to do this.
Dragonborn and tieflings would have made wonderful additions to the game in a second PHB or as new choices alongside gnomes and half-orcs. But now they're canonical and the old races are options. I don't understand at all why any of these changes were needed.
Paragon Paths: Here's a design decision with which I strongly disagree. In the old days (you know, back in '03 or so), as your character advanced in level, he or she could choose to follow another path -- a "prestige class." Instead of focusing on being a fighter, your rapier-armed swashbuckler could become a duelist with new abilities and a slightly different take on life. The same for clerics, rogues, sorcerers and everyone else. Once you'd qualified, you could do something different and exciting. And it happened at different levels depending upon what you wanted to do. There were dozens of them, too -- perhaps hundreds. Perhaps too many, since the choices soon became bewildering. But they were fun, there was no doubt, and making up new P-classes geared toward my campaign was one of my more enjoyable tasks as a DM.
That's all over now. Once more, one of the elements of the game that gave me the most pleasure has had a 4th-Edition shaped pin stuck in its balloon. Now instead of prestige classes, we have "Paragon Paths," corresponding to the "Paragon levels" (i.e. 11th-20th, as opposed to "heroic" 1st-10th and "epic" 21st-30th). Once you reach Paragon Level, it's up to you to pick a paragon path. A paladin can decide to follow the path of the Astral Weapon (yep, it's really called that) who gets extra damage and killing powers because he's a literal "weapon" of his or her god, the path of the Champion, who is particularly effective against demons and elementals, the way of the Justicar, who gets some buffs to help allies and does extra damage against the unrighteous, or the path of the Hospitaler who specializes in healing.
Unfortunately, that's it. Astral Weapon, Champion, Justicar or Hospitaler. And you HAVE to pick a paragon path. Your powers from level 11 to 20 all derive from it. This wouldn't be so bad if there were more choices, but each class only gets four at this point. You can't be Joe the 13th level fighter anymore. Now you have to be Joe the 13th level PIT FIGHTER.
I'm sure more paths will become available as more books come out, but come on! If I've decided on Justicar for my paladin, and then six months later a book comes out with the perfect paragon class, what do I do? Leave it alone, ignore it, reboot the character, etc? The concept is not bad, but the choices seem way too limited, especially in this context.
Multiclassing has been largely emasculated by this system. If you really, really want to multiclass, you can't do it until you reach paragon level, and when you do you can multiclass instead of taking a paragon path. No more switching classes at low levels. If you want to play the young Conan as a 2nd level barbarian/1st level thief, you are SOL. It seems like more choices have been taken away with this system than have been gained.
When you hit 21st level, you have to pick an Epic Destiny and once more your choices are limited. You can be an Archmage ("the world's preeminent wizard"), a Deadly Trickster ("amusing, unrivalled, and deadly"), a Demigod ("a divine spark ignites your soul, setting you on the path to apotheosis") or an Eternal seeker ("You continue to search for your ultimate destiny."). Again, that's it. You can pick only one of four suggested destinies, and gain the powers that go along with them. And as the rules are currently written, you are required to do so. If your character doesn't really want to be the world's most powerful wizard or deadly rogue, a demigod or just a guy/gal who wanders around causing trouble, you're out of luck again. Epic Destinies seem underdeveloped and lack choice.
Alignment: Also gone are the days of the eightfold way and the superfluity of alignments along the lawful/chaotic and good/evil axis. Loved by some and hated by others, alignment was one of the most controversial and difficult of concepts in the D&D milieu. Were creatures "naturally" evil or good? Was a paladin obligated (as suggested by an especially well-known designer) to kill a village of orcs, including young ones, because they would grow up to be evil? What about if someone was evil but wasn't currently ACTING evil? What if he was evil but never ever actually DID anything evil?
Such philosophical questions were rife in the black and white world of D&D. Good was good and evil was evil. And there were three kinds of each, plus of course such oddities as True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral. Personally, I liked the eight-point alignment system and thought it covered the range of human behaviors quite neatly. Darth Vader was lawful evil, but Hannibal Lecter was chaotic evil. Han Solo was chaotic good while King Arthur was lawful good. Judge Dread was lawful neutral. You get the idea.
Once more, say goodbye to yet another cherished convention. I can hear the screams of agony from the old school already. We now have five, count 'em, FIVE alignments: good (just plain ol' good), lawful good (or I suppose "ULTRA-SUPER good"), evil (or "regular" evil), chaotic evil (all together now -- "MEGA-EXTRA EEEEEVIL") and unaligned, which covers most animals and natural forces as well as those who choose not to decide (but, as Rush once told us, still have made a choice). In reality, there are only three alignments, with extreme variations on each end of the scale -- good, unaligned and evil. I'm sorry, if you didn't like or understand alignment this is probably a welcome change, but for the rest of us, this absolutely sucks rocks.
The new system raises a lot of questions. What alignment is the Dread Pirate Roberts, for example? We really can't have Chaotic Neutral anymore. What about Saruman? Evil or EXTRA EVIL??? Hard to say, really. Why is Chaotic Evil so much more evil than just plain "Evil"? Are Lawful Good characters like paladins "better" than "normal" good ones? Great, another reason for paladins to be annoying and pretentious.
And that begs one further question. If lawful good is better and chaotic evil is worse, are the designers suggesting that law (as in love of order, obedience to authority, lack of variability, rigidity of thinking) is somehow "good" and chaos (preference for randomness, disobedience to authority, greater variability, disrespect for institutions) is "evil"? If so, then I suspect that the members of the religious right will no longer be as down on D&D as they once were.
While alignment had many detractors, and this change will be welcome to them, some of us like the eightfold alignment system. It once more feels as if we've been deprived of a lot of freedom for no apparent reason, and for no evident improvement in game play or enjoyment.
Hit Points: This one kind of rankles too, but again your reaction will depend on your feelings toward the old system. Remember rolling for hit points? Wizards got 1d4, fighters got 1d10, clerics 1d8 and the like. Remember the frustration when you rolled a 1, and the elation when you rolled the maximum? Remember trying to persuade the DM to let you have a do-over when you rolled a "1" for hit points, and what a jerk he was when he turned you down? Remember the tension, the stress, the frustration, the sheer madness of it all? Alternately, remember rolling a 10 for your fighter or a 12 for your barbarian? It felt as if you'd really accomplished something by just rolling a weirdly-shaped piece of plastic on the dining room table.
I'm sorry/glad to say that another cherished/hated tradition has bitten the dust. At first level, your character gets a fixed amount of hit points (10 for wizards, 12 for clerics, rangers, rogues and warlords, 15 for fighters, paladins and rangers) plus your Con score (not bonus). As your character advances, he or she gains a fixed number of hit points every level, which means that each and every fifth-level fighter will have 39 hit points (15 plus 6 per level after first) plus their respective Con scores.
"Hey, Ted, my fifth level fighter with a 12 Con has 51 hit points! How many does yours have?"
"Well, Bob, it just so happens that my fifth-level fighter has a 14 Con, so she has 53!"
"Wow! We're almost the same! In fact, we can easily guess how many hit points a character has based solely on his level and never be off by more than five to ten points!"
"Right you are, Ted! Now let's go take down that fifth-level Wizard. He's sure to have only 29 to 44 hit points!"
I exaggerate, surely. But I admit that when I saw this particular item in the PHB, I took up the clipboard upon which I was designing my first 4th Edition character and threw it across the room, stalking out and muttering that I was never going to play this stupid game and that OGL 3.5 remained the "True" game to me.
I later relented, but I still wonder. What real utility is this to the game? That is makes the math easier? That it spares gamers wrist strain from rolling hit points so often? That it evens the playing field and makes every character just about as capable of taking damage as every other of the same class and level? That they want to spare DMs the pain of telling players that they can't reroll "1"s? That the designers just thought it was cute? That they wanted to mollify all those poor players who rolled 1's and 2's for their barbarians? That they're literally TRYING to piss some 3.5 players off?
Hell, I don't know. All I know is that this "improvement" on the old system doesn't work for me. I hate it, but now that it's been enshrined as 4th Edition canon we have no choice but to accept it until, of course, the new and improved Edition 4.5 is released next year (this last is just speculation on my part and is not based on any direct knowledge or insider info). All you guys and gals who hated rolling hit points and wished you knew how many points you were going to have for the rest of your character's career, however -- rejoice!
Online Content
Finally, I should mention D&D Insider. WotC has made a major push to incorporate the Internet and on-line tools into its repertoire. The Insider page (along with the so-called "Gleemax" rpg community -- pardon me, but "Gleemax" is a really lame name, telling us nothing about the community or the games that it supposedly represents) will eventually include content from both the new all-electronic editions of both "Dungeon" and "Dragon" as well as character archives, die rollers, utilities, a dungeon designer, character modeler, and so on. While this is actually a wonderful resource, I think the $14.95 per month fee is way too much, comparable to a month of unlimited play on WoW or the other online games that have influenced the new D&D so much.
In addition (and this is an intensely personal statement of personal rage, so bear with me), the page currently features an animation that sums up everything that's wrong with the new D&D. A thundering drumbeat, eventually joined by a hot, rockin' heavy metal guitar riff accompanies a montage of images from the basic D&D books at ever-increasing, ever harder-rockin' pace, ending with an elfy-looking cartoon character who grins goofily then says (I'm not making this up), "I'm a monster. RAR!"
Okay, WotC, I've been easy on you up to this point. But now I must say that I hate this animation with the white-hot fury of ten thousand suns. If you want to retain any shred of your old dignity, please remove it and replace it with something a little less embarrassing. A clip from the old D&D cartoon, or an image of Jeremy Irons leering at the camera from the "Dungeons and Dragons" movie, for example.
Sorry for the digression. That animation REALLY bugs me.
In any event, the aforementioned resources aren't yet available, for $14.95 or for any other price, as we've been informed that the DDI site will not be functional for several months. I'm having flashbacks to 3E's "Master Tools," a suite of promised D&D related software apps that ended up being a very limited character generator and was released months late after dozens of independent character generators had already been shared on line. Hopefully, six months from now we won't have to see a press release from WotC telling us that the promised online tools won't be available after all, then spinning it to make it sound as if what they're going to put in their place is even BETTER.
Conclusions
Of my differences with the designers of D&D 4th edition, a few are significant and many are minor nitpicks. Yet when added together, they paint a troubling picture. With the exception of the now-sacred d20 mechanic (which wasn't in 1st or 2nd Edition in its current form anyway) and a few superficial elements (classes, levels, races), this game may be so significantly different that it just doesn't "feel" like D&D to me anymore. As I have already said several times that doesn't make it a bad game -- in fact, it makes it a good one, but I'm still not 100% sure that it lives up to the promise of WotC's French-accented spokesman, that Fourth Edition was the same game ONLY BETTER.
Exactly three decades ago, in 1978, E. Gary Gygax -- the man who brought so much joy and yet caused so much frustration among us gamers -- wrote a now-infamous editorial about "Game Balance," a long and overwritten screed that accused anyone who dared to depart from the sacred written words of the AD&D rules of "spoiling the game." AD&D, he said, was carefully and scientifically balanced so that every element perfectly and intricately meshed in flawless harmony with all the others. Given the careful, painstaking job that EGG had done in balancing this game, any attempt to improve or modify it was doomed to failure. Critical hits, spell points, allowing wizards to use swords, weapon specialization -- all of these and more were heretical violations of the magnificent beauty that was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and should be shunned by all. Anyone who played with such rules, Gygax declared, was not truly playing "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons," but rather a "Variant Fantasy Game."
Well, for years I accepted the mantle of "variant fantasy gamer" and used crits, weapon specialization, spell points and all those other conventions, most of which found their way into future editions of D&D, much (I am sure) to EGG's disdain. Yet despite this, the game was always the same, and it always deserved the moniker "Dungeons and Dragons."
Now EGG has passed on, and despite my occasional anger at his pontifications and pretentiousness, I miss the old guy. His original game was indeed all about combat and miniatures, with almost no real rules for roleplaying. He came from a wargaming background, and First Edition D&D showed that. In some ways, in emphasizing combat and miniatures, 4E is moving back to its roots.
But do I really want that? Haven't my tastes and gaming style evolved since the 1970s? Is going back to the original intent of 1E really an improvement? In returning to the intent of the original designers, has 4E D&D ironically transformed itself into the dreaded "Variant Fantasy Game"? Or was 3E the "variant" all along, a detour that has been corrected by 4E, returning D&D to the path of truth and righteousness?
The final answer is that I don't know. I see good and bad in the new edition. It may take the mantle of D&D easily, convert legions of fans and in the process move roleplaying even farther into the mainstream. But I'm afraid that the changes may be so extensive that it won't resemble D&D anymore. I'm fearful that it will be called "Dungeons and Dragons" only because that's what's printed on the cover, and that the game I play won't resemble the game that I once loved.
I'm not saying that will happen. But if it does, it will be a sad day indeed.
Game on.
Review Summary