Reviews of this material have been hotly contested so I want to get a few things out of the way immediately.
First, the review is going to be long and include a lot of personal “blah-blah-blah”. If you don’t care for it, then skip the review.
The review is also based on a series of gaming sessions with the material as well as several read-throughs. (I personally think a review that doesn’t involve at least some table time is a waste of electrons.)
Finally, I’ve only seen the game up to fourth level and my experiences with Third Edition tell me this should be something to consider seriously before judging the game. Third Edition D&D broke at about 12th – 15th level and I don’t know what will happen at higher levels in Fourth Edition.
My Biases
By providing you with an understanding of my personal bias, hopefully I empower you to better evaluate my opinions and that’s all they are. You can agree or disagree with my opinions as you like but I don't really feel like arguing with anyone about it. You are welcome to your opinions and I hope I'm welcome to mine.
Bias 1 - Old school D&D gamer
I started playing D&D in the third grade when my dad brought home the Red Box and I remember when "Elf" was a class. We rolled up characters and played through Gygax's classic B2 - Keep on the Borderlands. (If anyone is interested, my character was killed by a tough hobgoblin in the torture chamber with a whip. I have since replayed the adventure and given him the smack-down he so richly deserves.)
I've played Basic D&D, Advanced D&D, Second Edition D&D, Third Edition D&D, and 3.5 Edition D&D. For the most part, I have had fun with all of them.
Bias 2 - Thief
The first player I ever rolled up was a thief named Mark Hinkerman. As I mentioned above, he didn't live long and I've been stuck playing thieves and rogues ever since. It's always bothered me that thieves get screwed by DMs while fighters, wizards, and clerics get a free pass. I knew one thief who would just tumble during combat because he couldn't hit anything and his hit points were so low he would die if he got hit more than twice.
You never see a fighter being arbitrarily denied the chance to hit, but just ask any DM if you can get behind someone unexpectedly in a fight or try to hide during combat. Both are things you see all the time in the movies and literature, but DMs are notorious for overruling you into mediocrity or even uselessness. The same DMs that have no problem with a 15d6 fireball wiping out a room full of bad guys suddenly freak when the thief wants to use his skills to "cheat" in an encounter.
Thief: "Can I get behind him?"
DM: “That’s not possible."
Thief: "Can I run out of the room and hide?"
DM: "Nope.”
Thief: “Can I pick his pocket to get his sword out of his sheath before the fight?"
DM: "That would be cheating."
Before Third Edition came out, my characters never got to use the backstab feature of the thief class and it was only when the rules guaranteed me a situation I could control, did my thief get sneak attacks at all. Instead, combat was the domain of the brainless meat shields with high strength scores and D&D had no place for people like Jet Li, Errol Flynn, Neo, or Spiderman. At least in my experience there are more epic heroes with brains and speed than there are who wander around like the Incredible Hulk carrying an extra pail to catch their own drool while smashing everything in sight. (Did you notice a bias?)
Bias 3 - Dungeon Master
With regards to Fourth Edition, this will probably be my most serious bias. Balancing an encounter in previous editions has been very difficult with plenty of gotchas that can lead quickly to a Total Party Kill (TPK). As a DM, I always needed to be aware of where these gotchas were and include them in my encounter design.
Here are a couple of examples:
Ghouls are listed as a Challenge Rating (CR) 1 monster which should be suitable for a party of first level characters. That's like saying one ghoul equals 4 kobolds (CR = 1/4), 3 goblins (CR = 1/3), or 2 orcs (CR = 1/2). Anybody that has played the game for any length of time knows that any hit from a ghoul can paralyze their opponents for up to 5 rounds and the monster gets three attacks per round. With six players and a few unlucky rolls you have a TPK in nothing flat.
Another example is the Powerattack feat. Powerattack is much more powerful with two-handed weapons than it has any right to be. Take your typical bugbear and add one level of fighter. He should have a CR of four. We can rearrange his weapon feats to give him weapon focus with a greatsword and powerattack as his fighter feat. Now instead of dropping 1d8+2 each round as described in the Monster Manual, he is dropping 2d6 + 3 (STR x 1.5) + 6 (power attack). That shifts him from 6.5 average points of damage per hit to 16 points of average damage per hit by increasing his CR by 1. The same holds true for any of the brute type creates like ogres, orcs, or giants. Now imagine that you add the Cleave feat to the picture and you can see how hard it is to balance the game.
The other problem with being a DM is designing NPCs. Picking skill points might be wonderful for the player who does it once every 3 to 4 sessions, but doing it 30 times to make five sixth level NPCs to fight the party is a big waste of my time. If I didn't have electronic tools to pick the skills like PCGen, I would never do it. The higher the level of my player’s characters got, the more bogged down in minutia my encounter design was. At 15th level, the same five NPCs require me to assign skill points 75 times for an encounter that might last 5-6 rounds. I'll be honest and say I quit doing it. All my NPCs had whatever skill they needed whenever they needed it and I would spitball a value on the spot.
Bias 4 – Online Player
I participate in several games. I DM games every couple of weeks at a normal table with real live players and everything. However, when I play a character, we all join up together on a Skype conference call and use OpenRPG to play. Some of the players are in the MidWest, some are on the West Coast, and the DM lives in Australia. For those of you screaming bloody murder about D&D Insider, I invite you to try using OpenRPG for free. Wait for it to crash about five times during a four hour session and see if you how you feel about that coughing up $10 for something that actually works.
The other side effect of playing with OpenRPG is that our group started using the LTDFATM method of playing because it was harder for the DM to worry about rolling dice secretly. For those of you who aren’t initiated, that stands for Let The Dice Fall As They May. When you’re a DM and an encounter starts to go badly, you can fudge the rolls or you can exercise a non-strategic retreat for the monsters. When your group is playing LTDFATM, it becomes more important to balance the encounters well because fudging the rolls is off the table.
Now some more words on Third Edition D&D
When Third Edition came out, we played with a large group at the friendly local game shop through the Sunless Citadel adventure. Even then, some things became clear very quickly. The DM wasn't happy with the easy encounters so he would "spice them up" until he felt they were challenging. That would use all the party's spells and the spell caster would want to stop. The fighters still felt fine since they had been healed, but the group ended up camping inside the dungeon until the casters were ready again. This happened after every large encounter. It was terrible and not at all realistic.
Later I DM-ed for a group and when the characters hit 15th level the other side of the problem began to rear its head. I sent the party after an orcish army and lined them up on a field with a no man's land in between them. They rolled initiative and it was off to the races. The orcs began moving forward in ranks and the fighter set out at a dead run towards the bad guys. Before he got there, area of effect spells began wiping out everything on the horizon. Between fireballs, flame strikes, cloudkill, and blade barrier the fighter only managed to kill a couple of the peons in the front rank because the wizard felt sorry for him and made certain his area of effect spells left him something to hit.
At high levels, your player characters can either wipe the board clean in 1-2 rounds or they die because the gotchas can get progressively worse. On top of all that, the wizard was always flying with greater invisibility. Have you ever tried to balance an encounter so that you could involve the guy who has 18 ranks in tumble and a guy who is flying around invisible and dropping fireballs on everyone? It's pretty clear who the belle of the ball is and it sucks for everyone else.
To be fair to Third Edition, there were some good things about Third Edition that made the game easier to play and ensured that characters like the Rogue got a chance to use their abilities, but it also had its share of pitfalls from behind the screen. Characters of the same class were suddenly radically different because they had different skills and feats that helped to individualize the characters. There were some useless feats and some that were nuclear like Powerattack, and Cleave, but it was a handy way to customize a character into something special.
Onto the Review
Races
I’ll just get this out of the way pretty quickly. I think the Dragonborn are kinda lame. I look at them and all I can see is that min-maxxing player that wants the ultimate in damage per round. To be honest, I felt the same way about DarkSun’s Mule, Eberron’s war forged and the half-orc. I’m getting more used to them, but I tend to run grittier campaigns and these guys just seemed like coolness for coolness’s sake which turns out to not be so cool after all.
At first I hated the Eladrin too. The teleporting thing was weird for me and after reading through it a bit and then playing at the table with a Warlock, I got used to it. It doesn’t bother me so much that they have broken high elves and wild elves into two races. That’s how they were before, but the teleport thing took me some time and I’m still not certain what I think of it. I suppose if a drow can levitate and use faerie fire a limited teleport might be ok, but it certainly isn’t gritty. I mean… Elrond… He was gritty dirty fighting in Mordor and he didn’t teleport did he? Weird…
The remainder of the races were pretty cool. The dwarf got high marks for being able to heal himself as a minor action which I thought was very dwarfy. The half-elf can swipe an at-will from any class power in the game. The halfling’s movement rate is suddenly not crippling and he can avoid attacks. Probably the one race coming out of this on top is the human who comes out of the gate at first level like a bloated tick. He’s got more of everything and while he might not have a nifty unique encounter power, he’s got plenty of other stuff that is cooler.
Classes and Powers
Classes break down into three tiers. At the heroic tier you are above the reach of mortal men and you are pretty much a butt-kicker at level one. Our table experience suggests that’s true for everyone from wizard to fighter.
We haven’t reached the Paragon or Epic tiers at our table yet but you get a big power bump at each one. At the Paragon tier, you get to choose from three different “Paragon Paths” which is a slightly goofy name for what used to be a prestige class and it works much the same way. Mutliclass characters get to choose whichever path they want from their classes. The Epic stuff is like the Paragon paths but with more power. I expect we will see more of these in the future splat books.
The biggest change to Fourth Edition for the players is the Powers. Each class gets a set of unique powers that break down into things you can use all the time (At-Will), once per fight (Encounter), and once per day (Daily). I have seen some people argue that the game has been homogenized because every player uses basically the same mechanic for handling the powers. It might seem that way if you sit down and read the book, but at least in play the classes came across as very different. I’ll talk more about this when I get to the review at the table.
The other interesting thing about powers is that your ability to attack and do damage is tied to your key stat. The days when slobberingly stupid but strong fighters were king of the damage hill are gone. Now a Ranger or Rogue with a high Dexterity can compete with or even outdo a fighter when it comes to damage per round. They can’t take the damage, but they can sure dish it out.
Your characters also get Utility powers which provide your character a non-damage ability which is useful. These powers could be used daily or once per encounter.
Cleric powers spread damage out and provide buffs and healing. In Third Edition Clerics owned the game provided and there is a hangover effect here. While they do have ritual casting, their spell selection is gone. The spells are still there but they have all been recast as powers and they don’t have the same versatility. It was a pretty painful wake up call for the cleric in our group but the class still plays well at the table. It’s pretty clear that the cleric was broken before and while the cleric will have to wait for more Rituals to enjoy the versatility he/she once had, the works better in some ways. One example would be that your powers typically let you hit and buff in a single round rather than hit or buff. Now the cleric is in there swinging instead of running around as “hero support” to borrow a phrase from the film Sky High. Experience on opening the PHB… Ouch! Experience at the table… doing pretty well.
Fighter powers do a lot of damage to a single target and prevent bad guys from hitting your buddies. The biggest culture shock for me was that some powers even do damage on a miss. That irked me at first and I’m still not sure what I think of it. In Third Edition the fighter was like a pet dog that had to get excited for the same dog food every day. Every round was the same. Attack… Attack… Attack… In Fourth Edition, the fighter gets a much wider range of tactical options and you haven’t seen a happy fighter until you have seen one score a critical hit on a daily power. There was literally dancing and singing at the table. Experience on opening the PHB… Happy. Experience at the table… Very happy.
Paladin powers dance between cleric stuff and fighter stuff. Paladins can do a lot of damage and they provide anyone nearby with the ability to absorb a lot of damage because they can lay on hands. Experience on opening the PHB… Happy. Experience at the table… Nothing can kill me!
Rangers are the new golden child and they do an enormous amount of damage. Either they are ranged attackers (Legolas) or two-weapon attackers (Aragorn). Both cases drop huge amounts of damage and this class more than any other gets lots of attacks in a round. Experience on opening the PHB… Happy. Experience at the table… I can kill anything!
Rogues also get a welcome face lift. (Be aware that this may be my own rogue bias speaking here.) But now a Rogue has the ability to final reach the same heights as Jackie Chan, The Monkey King, or the movie Ninja. Rogues do a lot of damage and control mobility. They move a lot around the encounter and they can move their enemies. Third Edition guaranteed that the DM couldn’t nerf your sneak attack. Fourth Edition provides you the ability to push the bad guys around so that your sneak attacks come on line more often. A rogue that coordinates with a brick like a fighter or paladin should have no problem dropping a sneak attack once per round. There’s another addition to Fourth Edition… You only get one sneak attack per round. Personally, that’s fine with me considering my ability to flank an adversary just got much better. Experience on opening the PHB… Happy. Experience at the table… Finally a dexterity based combatant that works!
Warlock powers favor teleports and ranged damage. The Warlock doesn’t like being near the front lines and tends to hop all over the battle field making things tough for the bad guys. As I mentioned, at first the teleporting thing really bugged me, but as I saw it play on the table it was actually kinda cool. Experience on opening the PHB… I’m not so sure. Experience at the table… I’m bamfing all over the place!
Warlord powers are like cleric powers without the magic. The character tends to get into the meat-grinder while providing buffs to the other players. I thought it sounded cheesy and we haven’t had a chance to really exercise the class yet. Experience on opening the PHB… I’m not so sure. Experience at the table… I’m still not so sure.
Wizard powers reflect the spells the wizard had before but now you are guaranteed never to run out. When I first cracked the book, the first thing I noticed was that the wizard went from a large diverse selection of spells to the same number of powers everyone else had. Conjuration spells like summon monster and illusion spells are all gone. That hurt my wizard character pretty bad. However, that isn’t the entire story. The wizard is the only class that gets to pick from two utility powers and two daily powers. The wizard’s spell book holds these extra powers and the wizard gets to choose them each morning. Add the Expanded Spellbook feat and the wizard gets to choose from three daily powers each day making his power selection the most diverse in the game. When you consider in the fact that he’s always got magic missile on line and that fresh splat books will expand his selection of rituals things start looking up. At the table he was still doing his thing and while the flavor had been changed, he was still holding his own even at levels one through four. Experience on opening the PHB… Ouch! Experience at the table… Eat magic missile death you punks!
There are some missing classes and I realize that hacks off some of the puritanical types out there because they don’t want to wait or pay for extra splat books. Here is a news flash. If you are unhappy that you have to buy a splat book to pick up additional classes and races, I am open mouth with incredulity. It's not exactly a new phenomenon and every other RPG company does it.
A time line of some of the earlier D&D releases...
1974 - Original D&D released which initially required the Chainmail rules to play. They released the Greyhawk (1975) and Blackmoor (1975), Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (1976), supplements later. Greyhawk introduced the thief and Blackmoor introduced the Assassin and the Monk classes.
1977 - AD&D Monster Manual released. (Um... without a PHB no less.)
1977 - Basic D&D released (Red Box). Only covers levels 1-3. (If you want to complain, complain about that.)
1978 - Advanced D&D PHB released.
1979 - Advanced D&D DMG released. (Now we can finally play a game.)
1981 - Expert D&D released (Blue Box). Covers levels 4 - 14, but not compatible with AD&D. More righteous bitching to be had here.
1983 - 1985 - Basic D&D revised to include -- Basic (1-3), Expert (4-14), Companion (15-25), Master (26-36), Immortal (transcended levels). Plenty to bitch about here too and still not compatible with AD&D.
1985 - Unearthed Arcana Released. (Introduces the Barbarian class.)
1989 - 2nd Edition D&D released... And then of course came the "Complete Fighter", "Complete Thief", and other "Complete" splat books.
2000 - 3E released. And then we get splat books filled with prestige classes.
2003 - 3.5E released and then we get "Complete Warrior", "Complete Adventurer", etc. hardcover splat books.
If you are really that upset about not getting to immediately play half-orc bards, gnomish barbarians, and warforged sorcerers then WotC has already published some character conversion guidelines if you want to work around it. If you just want to complain about splat books, acting surprised and outraged at this juncture is a bit disingenuous. I suppose you could always play World of Warcraft but even then you have to pay a monthly fee and if you want the new material... you still have to buy it.
As far as WotC grubbing for my money... You can buy all 3 books for $63 with the Amazon discount and no shipping charge. What's the problem? If the players share the PHB with the DM, you can play the game for $63. Um... How much would you pay to see a movie? Our sessions average about 5 hours+. If you and 4 friends went to go see 2 movies lasting about 4 hours, wouldn't it cost you about $80 - $90? In my experience, time spent for money invested beats about everything else out there.
With that out of the way, let’s get back to the game material.
Feats and Multiclassing
You still get feats but they tend to be minor nudges and the nuclear game-busting options are largely gone. You get to pick feats every other level and you get bonus feats at first level, tenth level, and twentieth level.
The multiclassing isn’t something that is grasped quickly and you need to spend a bit of time with it to appreciate it. I’m ready to admit the previous version was more elegant.
If your first reaction is “Why can’t my Fighter/Ranger/Cleric/Wizard still summon 1d3 badgers!” I guarantee you will be unhappy. If you want to create an iconic like Elric of Melnibone, Conan, Legolas, Fafhd, or the Grey Mouser you should be happy with the ability to tweak. It’s also much more difficult to build a character that sucks. All the multiclass characters should be viable.
You will use feats to build out your multiclass abilities and your class isn’t as fluid as it was in Third Edition because it strongly identifies your character’s focus and you can also only multiclass into one other class. That doesn’t mean you can’t convert a triple or even quadruple class character from an older game, but you will be looking for the essence and abilities and not the class name when you do it.
One example is that it used to be that a Rogue3Wizard3 was pretty much standardized with the exception that you got more skill points and hit points at first level. Now a RogueWizard and a WizardRogue are very different creatures.
If you wanted to add fighter abilities to that RogueWizard, you can start adding armor and weapon feats. Your character will be wearing chainmail by at least fourth level and using a longsword, shield, and full plate by tenth level with no penalties to arcane spell casting. That progression could be even faster if you pick a race that complements your multiclassing goals.
If you wanted to lean towards clerical abilities pick the healing, religion, and ritual casting skills. (In combat you can heal an ally instead of attacking which fills that niche pretty nicely.)
If you want to pick up magical abilities, pick arcana and ritual casting. (As a side note, some of the rituals are pretty stupid. The feast ritual springs to mind immediately. It is a fourth level ritual that costs 35 GP to feed your group trail rations. I have a much better solution… Spend 2 SP per adventurer and pack some rations in your bag.)
Skills
Skills have been significantly streamlined and the knowledge and crafting feats are strangely absent. All characters automatically get a skill bonus equal to half their level which means even the drooling fighter learns something about religion, arcana, thievery, and history as he goes up in levels. Each class gets a number of trained skills that give you a flat +5 to the skill and if you want more you can use a feat to get a trained skill or an additional +3. This was the first serious complaint I got from my players. They wanted to customize their skills more than that and the skill-happy player was unhappy that others would automatically get better.
That’s fair criticism but as far as the DM goes if you don’t get at least a little better at your skills it makes balancing skill encounters tougher. It’s like the high level wizard problem from a different direction. The 15th level cleric with 18 ranks in tumble coupled with a 20 charisma and a feat that drops him an additional +3 to diplomacy skill checks will successfully negotiate a favorable treaty with Asmodeus while the rest of the party cooks in the hells. If you have ever seen the rest of the party groan when a skill-based encounter came up, you know what I’m talking about.
The new format for skill based encounters empowers the players again. Everyone’s at least able to succeed on a skill based check even if they aren’t the best at it. In my case, I put together a trial using diplomacy as the base skill and let the other characters assist with rolls. Some used History looking for precedents, and other used Decipher Script to read legal books. Some used streetwise and others used bluff, but everybody had an opportunity to add to the experience and ever player was engaged and yes… even rolepplaying. I know there are people out there that see the mechanics and scream that it is nothing more than a miniature combat game. At least in my experience, that wasn’t true.
Combat
The basic rules are the same as they ever were. Move around… Hit stuff… Instead of counting diagonal squares on the table as five and then 10 feet, you count them all as five feet. That might offend the simulationists out there but when we tried it, life got easier.
The characters using their powers make a difference and there are some minor tweaks in weapons and armor. For example the longsword is now more correctly a weapon that can be used in one or two hands. Armor doesn’t automatically cause spell failure. Instead of just an armor class you have armor class, reflex, will, and fortitude defenses. Part of the combat involves figuring out where an ally is weak and directing your attacks there.
Characters now have a limited number of healing surges per day and they can burn one per combat. A healing surge restores one quarter of your total hit points and because it scales, it works well at every level. It also frees the cleric up to do more during the fights.
One of the fun surprises at the table was that when a character is dying and unconscious, rolling a natural 20 on the saving throw triggers a healing surge. I had spent some time trying to drop the Paladin and when she finally went down my monsters turned to the next hero to try and clear the table. The Paladin rolled a 20 and she stood back up just as the bad guys were getting ready to pound on the mage. It was highly cool and even more so because it was unexpected.
One of the disappointments for anyone wanting to run a gritty game is that when the characters take an extended rest, they are also completely healed. I realize that with a cleric in the party you would heal all the characters magically but a fighter running through a dungeon by himself can camp his way through it now. Ug! The days of extended and painful healing are gone and I’m going to need to come up with a house rule for that one.
I should advise that your first combat encounter will be a headache as everyone tries to read through the books and figure out how their powers work. The players won’t know how to work together until at least the second combat and things don’t really start to click for them until the third. I recommend putting all the encounter and daily powers on cards so that you aren’t constantly flipping through the books.
Here’s my biggest gripe with the player’s handbook. It does seriously need an index. It isn’t the end of the world, but the constant need when you are learning the game to flip through the book pretty much sucks. As an online player using OpenRPG, I tried the first revision of the compendium and it helps, but a well organized index of the powers should have been a no-brainer.
Dungeon Mastering
It’s my opinion that the biggest changes to the game are behind the DM’s screen. The DM’s guide is short and sweet and it finally has a good system for balancing the encounters.
Monsters have been rebalanced based on the per round damage potential and that makes a big difference in how the game plays. Save or die effects that can nuke a party are also gone. You have an experience point budget for each player in the party that reflects their level. Use that budget to buy some monsters. Monsters have roles to play in the fight and the book lists some suggested groupings to combine the roles together like “Wolf Pack”, “Commander and Troops”, and “Dragon’s Den”. You can make the encounter tougher or easier by spending more or fewer experience points than your budget, but that’s pretty much it. Simple and easy.
The best part is that you can send your first level group of players into a combat with 20 bad guys and it still works if you use the method. Do that in the other editions of D&D and you’re asking for a TPK.
I already mentioned that the skill encounters were working pretty well but I need more time with them to see what my final thoughts will be.
Creating monsters quickly is also much easier and there’s a quick step-by-step method for doing it. I used it to create war dogs in a few minutes to flesh out an encounter with a group of bandits. There are rules for damage by level which are also very helpful when you need to spitball reasonable damage for your group when they do something unexpected.
When creating NPCs I can crank through the character creation process which should be much easier or I can apply some ready-made templates. I haven’t tried this yet but I have an evil necromancer I need to put together and there is a template with his name on it waiting for me. I can’t really give this a tumbs up or down yet.
The monsters in the Monster Manual were a good mix of classic monsters that were now broken out by roles. The index in the Monster Manual included the information I needed to look things up. I want to also indicate that I haven’t given the high level monsters any play time yet.
I went back and ran a Third Edition game last week and balancing the encounters was not nearly so easy. At least as far as the back end of the game goes, it is a big improvement.
Final Thoughts
Players are simultaneously going to have more and fewer options than ever before. Your physical characters are going to be very happy when they get to do more in combat. Your magical characters may initially flinch and then recover when they get used to the table experience.
Multiclassing is tougher to understand initially but provides a better range than before without ever creating a character guaranteed to be a loser.
Future splat books are the way the industry has always worked and I can live with that.
The skill based encounters seem to encourage roleplaying and my players really enjoyed it.
The combat was quick and everybody had something to do. Even with the mechanical sameness of the way powers work, the characters were different enough that each had a strong personal flavor. I think healing all your damage from a single nights rest is pretty dumb, but I need to decide how I want to handle it.
After using the DM’s tools, this DM is never going to want to go back.
I recommend the new version of the game, but if you have any concerns over what I have described, look for companies like Paizo Publishing and Green Ronin to continue the Third Edition line as they are also very good at what they do.
Review Summary