4th Edition Review

[alhoon]

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I prefer the simplicity since in 4th edition (and D&D in general) the monsters are there to be killed and the PCs are there to survive.
If you have more fun your way, then by all means do that.

And yeap, I meant stairs, not ladder. My mistake.

[Jester of the FoS]

That's one of my problems with 4e.

In 3e it was save or die and pray you rolled high. In 4e it's miss or die, with the enemy making the roll. You suddenly lose all power. Sure, most effects let you have a couple saves, but a rare few (Orcus) just kill you with a hit. No save, no nothing.

[Snake]

Well I looked at the Player's Handbook and based on only that I wanted to give a quick review of what I'm seeing with 4th edition.

As a player I can see 4th edition being very fun. Every class has their own spells, or prayers, or exploits to use that make each class unique. There are several paths to take with each class and more are opened as you get to level 11 and more still at level 21. No more is a fighter forced to swing a sword boringly until he is able to prestige class into using more unique abilities.

However...

This very aspect that makes it more enjoyable for players I can see making a DMs life a nightmare and quite complicated. Now if a DM wants to make NPCs for the group to fight, they have to worry about the NPCs weapons, skills, feats, magic items, and gear like before, but also their spells, prayers, or exploits now regardless of the NPCs level. They also have to remember all those abilities or find themselves flipping through the book constanly looking for several things for several enemy NPCs. I know if you get the character sheets Wizards sells, you get cards for the encounter powers, at will powers, and daily powers, but that is just one more thing to photo copy and keep for EVERY NPC you have the group fight.

One reason I might have had the group fight a fighter over a wizard was that fighters were easier and faster to design in 3rd/3.5 edition; not so anymore in 4th.

Healing surges are a nice touch, but on the flip of that, I can see battles dragging out now because too much healing is going on.

Action points give you an extra action and you can get more by long resting or by going through two encounters without long resting but thats just more too remember in conjuntion with the feats, skills, powers of each class, etc.

Splitting up the classes and other core elements into several Player's Handbooks, DMGs, MMs, etc is just a crude attempt to make more money in my opinion. Wizards did this in 3rd edition, but the core elements were in one book; the base classes weren't divided into several books.

As far as ease of learning goes I really don't see how this edition is easier to teach/learn than 3rd/3.5 was. There is so much more to remember and handle that it can be quite daunting. I tried teaching my girlfriend 4th and it failed horribly. I then tried 3.5 and it was much smoother. She felt the character sheet flowed much smoother and made more sense; I have to agree after analyzing both. Attacking in 4th edition just seems to be made more confusing with the Str vs. AC, Dex vs. AC, and boxes everywhere on the sheet. 3rd edition just seemed better explained and smoother to follow, I think.

Plus, I found myself having to flip through the entire book to get a full explanation on how action points work, how attack bonuses work, etc.

I understand a lot of people were angered by the release of 3.5, me included, but I'd rather learn the differences in 3.5 than try to adapt to 4th. Plus I've spent hundreds of dollars on 3rd/3.5 edition books, and that's hard to leave behind.

Just my outtake; hope it helps someone as previous reviews helped me.

[Jester of the FoS]

This very aspect that makes it more enjoyable for players I can see making a DMs life a nightmare and quite complicated. Now if a DM wants to make NPCs for the group to fight, they have to worry about the NPCs weapons, skills, feats, magic items, and gear like before, but also their spells, prayers, or exploits now regardless of the NPCs level. They also have to remember all those abilities or find themselves flipping through the book constanly looking for several things for several enemy NPCs. I know if you get the character sheets Wizards sells, you get cards for the encounter powers, at will powers, and daily powers, but that is just one more thing to photo copy and keep for EVERY NPC you have the group fight.

I'd recommend checking out the DMG and MM in regards to this.
NPCs are stated-out like monsters again, and do not use PC rules in any way shape or form.
And their information is much more condensed with the mechanical effects of equipment factored in.

Healing surges are a nice touch, but on the flip of that, I can see battles dragging out now because too much healing is going on.

No more than 3e. And there's now a limit to the number of times someone can be healed in a fight, unlike high-level 3e games where the clerics can just keep healing the tank until the cleric runs dry.

As far as ease of learning goes I really don't see how this edition is easier to teach/learn than 3rd/3.5 was. There is so much more to remember and handle that it can be quite daunting. I tried teaching my girlfriend 4th and it failed horribly. I then tried 3.5 and it was much smoother. She felt the character sheet flowed much smoother and made more sense; I have to agree after analyzing both. Attacking in 4th edition just seems to be made more confusing with the Str vs. AC, Dex vs. AC, and boxes everywhere on the sheet. 3rd edition just seemed better explained and smoother to follow, I think.

Knowing the game yourself is half the battle. I suspect 3e comes off as easier just because you have the answers more readily.

Plus, I found myself having to flip through the entire book to get a full explanation on how action points work, how attack bonuses work, etc.

I remember flipping through the 3e PHB looking for the difference between standard, full-attack and full-round actions. Or if you could take a move action then a 5-foot step.

[Razan de Ullapool]

A friend pointed me at this review. I read it and had some comments I thought you guys might have an opinion on.

classes:

"I think roles will be one of the main sticking points for some people. Some will find them restrictive, as you wont be able to make a Cleric who is a controller or a Wizard who is a defender - but to me they are a good guide to suggest to players what class might appeal to them most. Me? I like strikers and controllers, but occasionally a good defender is fun to play too."

He's got it all wrong. I want to play a Cleric who worships the god of Death and Renewal who has a minor attribute in Agriculture. He is a calm individual who sees helping people pass over into his god's realm while helping those left behind cope as his true religious mission. He is kind and will go out of his way to help others. He doesn't enjoy killing though, as he perceives killing as interfering with his god's will. So do the new rules help me build such a character? The last thing I want to play is a cleric wearing a big white t-shirt that says "Defender" on it.

skills:

"....In actual play this proved to be a lot of fun and encouraged some creative roleplaying as players tried to figure out which of their strong skills could be used to help with the challenge. They do seem tough DCs, and some players found the structure lead away from immersive in character talk to the old "my character says something about how this is a good plan..." type talking."

Always good to encourage more roll-playing in D&D which has always skirted the edge of not being a role-playing game at all. Note that you can't specialize in a set of skills anymore to try to give your character flavor. All Wizards of the same level have the same skills at the same level of ability.

multi-class:
Here's a spot where they could have saved this system (some). You pick a class and then choose multi-class feats to make something new and interesting. But the reviewer says the messed these up. Since I pretty much disagree with the reviewer in general, he may be wrong and these might be OK. He can't understand why someone would take one class and then add in abilities from another. Doesn't the player know that class is a Striker? Why is the player taking Defender feats for his character? Now you can't tell what role that character plays in combat. (Another thing I hate. Redefining role to be where you fit in combat instead of where you fit in the story. Sorry, that's roll-playing not role-playing.)

equipment: Ahh, the author finally shows his cluelessness.

"But some weapons just seem pointless. Consider this example - why would a rogue ever choose a hand crossbow over a sling? Both do the same amount of damage, have the same bonus and properties. But the crossbow is 25 gp and weighs 2 pounds while the sling costs 1gp and weighs nothing."

I wanted to reach through my screen and smack this guy after reading the above. I wonder if he's ever actually played a role-playing game?

magic items:

"I could almost say the same for Magic Items. Fourth Edition is swimming with magic items. Personally, I like this. But I can see other players wanting a less "magical" fantasy game being frustrated. "

Yes, it's always good to take something fantastical and out of the ordinary and make it commonplace.

rituals:

"This is a inspired design choice - allowing all PCs to choose a feat that grants them magical ability....there are a couple of cases where it seems that thought did not go into a few of these rituals. For example, Discern Lie seems a waste of a spell."

I'm beginning to see. This is a review of 4th ed D&D by The Munchkin Man. One of my favorite all time 2ed characters was a paladin who had Discern Lie instead of Detect Evil. Part of his job as a paladin was to act as a roaming circuit judge (and executioner). Discern Lie was way more helpful than Detect Evil. Of course it didn't help much in combat or while wandering around dungeons so I suppose the author would consider it worthless.

Thoughts?

[HuManBing]

I agree with Snake. DnD has always been a "Start at nothing and build upwards" type of game, but as successive editions come out, the progression has been more and more complex, and with greater degrees of arbitrariness thrown in.

It's great for a player who will approach this from the "user friendly" end of the digestive system. But for a DM who wants to pull a 14th level enemy out of his hat, he has to go through the entire system and wrestle with the progression. The 4th edition seems like a logical enough progression from the same system we've seen before, and it adds a few new bells and whistles.

But the DM still has to essentially think of it from a player's eye view.

[Jester of the FoS]

...but as successive editions come out, the progression has been more and more complex, and with greater degrees of arbitrariness thrown in.

I have to strongly disagree with this. The more editions we get, the less arbitrary the system gets. 1e is pretty much a lesson in chaos and disorder with none of the rules working together at all and everything written because that's the way things made sense to the author.
Re-read the old, 1st Edition AD&D stuff. It's crazy.

While it's alot of work to make a L14 threat, with 4e it is much, much easier and quicker than 3e.
And 1-2e monster-making was really a judgement call. There was no real way to tell if something was level-appropriate, even from the official product.

[Lord Soth]

This very aspect that makes it more enjoyable for players I can see making a DMs life a nightmare and quite complicated. Now if a DM wants to make NPCs for the group to fight, they have to worry about the NPCs weapons, skills, feats, magic items, and gear like before, but also their spells, prayers, or exploits now regardless of the NPCs level.

Check out the DMG, page 187. Creating NPC's is pretty easy. 4E takes the track that NPC's don't have to be written up just like PC's. You can if you want to, but it isn't necessary for NPC's to follow the same rules as PC's. So creating an NPC is far simpler than creating a PC in either 4E or 3E.

Healing surges are a nice touch, but on the flip of that, I can see battles dragging out now because too much healing is going on.

Bear in mind that healing surges can only be used in-combat in two ways. Either 1) through the use of a Second Wind (which can only be done once per encounter), or 2) they're activated by a power (like a healing spell). And like Jester points out, there's already plenty of in-combat healing. Difference is, once those Healing Surges run out, the healing is pretty much finished (there's still some healing which doesn't require a Healing Surge, but not a whole lot).

Splitting up the classes and other core elements into several Player's Handbooks, DMGs, MMs, etc is just a crude attempt to make more money in my opinion. Wizards did this in 3rd edition, but the core elements were in one book; the base classes weren't divided into several books.

I would've liked more classes, but remember that each class took up about 15 pages each. There simply wasn't space for them. About the only thing that could've been dropped from the PHB was the 32 pages of magic items, and that would've left enough room for two classes. In addition, some classes simply weren't ready. The Monk isn't even close to being finished, for instance. IMO, better to do the job right and release it later then do a bad job and release it early.

He's got it all wrong. I want to play a Cleric who worships the god of Death and Renewal who has a minor attribute in Agriculture. He is a calm individual who sees helping people pass over into his god's realm while helping those left behind cope as his true religious mission. He is kind and will go out of his way to help others. He doesn't enjoy killing though, as he perceives killing as interfering with his god's will. So do the new rules help me build such a character? The last thing I want to play is a cleric wearing a big white t-shirt that says "Defender" on it.

And there's absolutely nothing stopping you from playing such a character under 4E. Just because the role of the Cleric is "Leader", it doesn't mean you can't play a character like that. Incidentally, the new rules do help you build such a character, as you can play a character who, if you so choose, will never actually kill an enemy without messing around with subdual damage or anything of the sort.

Note that you can't specialize in a set of skills anymore to try to give your character flavor.

4E doesn't have the same kind of skill customization as 3E, but you can still specialize through the use of Skill Focus Feats.

(Another thing I hate. Redefining role to be where you fit in combat instead of where you fit in the story. Sorry, that's roll-playing not role-playing.)

Roles have nothing to do with your place in the story, and have no effect on it. It's just an indicator of your characters place in the combat end of things and nothing more. You're placing far more restrictions here then there actually are.

[HuManBing]

The more editions we get, the less arbitrary the system gets.

I have to agree in part and disagree in part. The mathematics got less arbitrary in the jump from 2nd to 3rd. The opposed roll mechanic was excellent, much better than the "flat chance of success" mechanic you saw in 2nd. They also ironed out the dice rolls to mostly d20s instead of the d100s and d20s you saw in 2nd.

But the character and class progression has definitely become more arbitrary. Want to be able to sneak attack? You'll need a few Rogue levels. Same with evasion. Want to be able to use loads of weapons? Take a level in Fighter. You can't get DR unless you take some levels in Barbarian. With 4th ed the number of class powers has increased, thus further requiring you to trust in the designers' balancing abilities. I would much rather have some system where all powers and abilities were available to every character in some way or form, without this fiddling around with class packages.

Maybe I'm just outgrowing the system. I find I want as much flexibility as possible, and rules that allow for logical customizability. The d20 system has a good structure in place to guide players with a preset progression, but it comes at the expense of flexibility.


And it just comes down to one thing: prior editions had excellent writers, and the campaign settings were amazing in fluff even if the system was clunky. Now, at 4E, there are no settings currently supported that I'm remotely interested in, and the system is STILL clunky. So I have neither the crunch I want, nor the fluff I used to get.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

But the character and class progression has definitely become more arbitrary. Want to be able to sneak attack? You'll need a few Rogue levels. Same with evasion. Want to be able to use loads of weapons? Take a level in Fighter. You can't get DR unless you take some levels in Barbarian.

In what prior edition could you take sneak attack without being a rogue? or learn loads of weapons without being a fighter? The very fact that the 3e multi-class system allowed you to "take a level of fighter" (a concept which simply didn't exist before) made it more flexible by its very nature. Now, I know you are leaning to extreme flexibility and away from classes entirely, and I admit that's a tempting prospect. But there's no way that 3e class progression is more arbitrary than 1e or 2e. Do you know the hoops you had to jump through in past editions to break out of a single class's features? As much as cherry-picking classes is decried sometimes as munchkinism, I think it offers very customizable characters. (which 4e sadly lacks. See, I'm on topic. )

By the way, have you looked at the "generic classes" in Unearthed Arcana? (available in the srd, if you don't have the book: www.rpgoracle.com/srd/unearthedNewClasses.html ) It's basically 3e classes stripped down to their core, with extreme customizability. Judging from your thoughts on class restrictions, you may be interested in it.

[HuManBing]

Yes, I have the Unearthed Arcana book. The system variants there have some good ideas (AC as DR, spells as spell points, etc) but they're still not flexible enough for me. They are still wedded to the underlying DnD system, which reduces their effectiveness for what I'm after.

But this is not a system revamp. It's a band aid. I also have heard that the Book of Exalted Deeds has a class that humans can take which allows them to sidestep the skill class/cross class problem that takes me days to roll up a classed NPC and gives me conniptions trying to fiddle Prestige Class requirements. But when a system relies on an obscure secondary text to salvage a clunky game mechanic, it's not a fix. It's the equivalent of tying your girlfriend's underpants around your fan belt in order that your car can limp the few miles down the road to the local garage*.

So yes, these options are available. But they don't make the game appreciably more playable, and they have mostly disappeared in the transition to 4th.

As for the class arbitrariness, I don't think you're taking my conceded points. The numbers involved are more intuitive, sure (like equal XP... which 4E has for some reason thrown out again) and multiclassing is easier. But it doesn't change the underlying rigid separation between classes. Yes, some powers are common throughout all eds of DnD, like the ones you cited, but 3rd ed. added more than ever before, and by definition that's going to mean you have to take the DnD designer's own word that they're balanced as a DM. As a player, if you want that power, you're going to have to take that class, like it or not. (And if you're classing away from Monk, some WOTC hack had decreed that You Can Never Go Back. Which is easily remedied by DM fiat but it is a clear sign of designer arbitrariness.)

And frankly given the trash talking that 4E's designers gave to 3E, I have no faith that any assertions of balance or quality design will last beyond their economic development cycle.

The final point is one I've made before and which makes this cavilling about editions somewhat moot. I acknowledge the system is clunky and has been for all of its history. But I stuck with it because of its fluff. Now there is no fluff, and the system is still clunky. Time to move on.

(* The girlfriend's underpants trick seldom works.)

[Jester of the FoS]

Keep in mind, they will likely be releasing a 4e version of Unearthed Arcana with a giant wad or House and Optional rules, likely opening up the game alot (and, for me, actually making it playable).

One way would be to assign each power source a 'class' then choose which of the features you want and mix-and-match powers of the appropriate level.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

As for the class arbitrariness, I don't think you're taking my conceded points. The numbers involved are more intuitive, sure (like equal XP... which 4E has for some reason thrown out again) and multiclassing is easier. But it doesn't change the underlying rigid separation between classes.

Agreed, and if classes aren't your bag, you're right.. time to move on. I happen to be a fan of a little bit of structure, but with some flexibility, and I guess that's why I like 3E so much. I do think that having some restrictions on classes is inherently balancing. You can't drop all your XP on one specialty, because each class level has pros and cons. Even if there are outlying class levels that are not exactly balanced, it's a lot easier to balance than just picking and choosing abilities.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sway you (or anyone) back. If you prefer a different system, go for it. I think the point I wanted to make was just that (within the scope of D&D) 3e was a high-water mark in terms of customization and freedom from rigid class archetypes.

[Lucius]

I pre ordered the books back in last October, and at that time I already decided that my Ravenloft campaign would still 3.5. My idea was to use 4th. ed. in short non RL campaigns.

I received the books some weeks ago and started to read, but when I finished (ok...in the first pages...but I decided ot read to the end) I came to the conclusion that D&D 4th edition failed to convince me.

So I decided to take those ideas I liked, add it to 3.5, and maybe with some ideas from Pathfinder, and make a homebrew "3.75" rules.

[WolfKook]

So I decided to take those ideas I liked, add it to 3.5, and maybe with some ideas from Pathfinder, and make a homebrew "3.75" rules.

...I guess that's what most of us old-schoolers will be doing.