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464 of 521 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A radical change of pace, June 6, 2008
This review is from: Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition (Hardcover)
The meteoric rise of Massively Multiplayer RPGs has created a unprecedentedly-large case study about what works for class advancement and balance. When I was first looking through the promotional material I noticed concepts from the MMO space cropping up: defender(tank), striker(dps), controller, and leader(support). I was initially disappointed by this, but the more I thought about it the more the idea began to grow on me. Every class now has a role within the group so there's no question about what each character should be doing.
The options for character advancement are fewer than previous versions. Whereas 3.x gave you the tools to create just about any type of character, that's not so much the case in 4. For the advanced players who enjoyed making odd concept characters, this is going to be their primary gripe with the system. I'm talking, frothing-at-the-mouth, storm-the-Bastille forum fanboy crazy.
For the rest of the players, who just want to _play_, it's going to be great. You don't have to worry about some powergamer creating a monstrosity of character that starts an arms race with the DM. Even if you don't have a powergamer around, there's very little chance of a player accidentally creating a character that's isn't effective in the group.
What excites me as a player is the fact that you get something cool at every level. It was always kind of boring as a fighter in 3.x: "Another feat. Yawn. This'll be interesting in another dozen levels when my build finally comes together". In 4e, I get something new to play with each time.
What excites me as a DM is that my life got easier. There aren't any "Attack of opportunity" or "grapple" nightmare rules like before. There's less opportunity for rule-lawyering and general powergaming. The various social skills have been streamlined, giving the DM the chance to RP with interested players, while disinterested players can just roll their way through it.
What doesn't excite me is the online component. From what I've seen I don't think WotC has the staff necessary to put out quality software. Anyone remember the e-tools they touted in 2000. No? There's a reason you don't. They got delayed for _years_, and when they finally came out they were terrible, unusable even. Software development at that scale is hard and it's even harder if you're not a software development house and aren't used to managing the projects.
Some people will complain that the new rules are too much like an MMO. It's their choice as to whether that's something they'll enjoy. One thing to keep in mind is this: It doesn't matter if you've been DMing for 30 years, any given MMO sees their rules exercised more in a single weekend that you've done in your career. A MMO is a crucible for finding rules that require a _minimum of human intervention_.
It boils down to this: if you enjoy the act of playing with your group and the rules are an accessory, then you'll love 4e. If you enjoy playing with the rules and your group is an accessory, then you'll hate 4e.
The MM is what you would expect: 150 or so monsters for heroes to fight. There's not much info that would be useful to the player. To help the DM, most monster entries (maybe all?) have an "Encounter Group", which is gives a list of creatures that, together with the current one, would make an appropriate encounter for a group of PCs and that makes sense in the D&D universe. The encounter group gives the recommended level and resulting XP. (Unlike 3.x, XP rewards don't scale based on the PC's level compared to the Challenge Rating. It's like 2E, where each monster has a set XP reward)
If you read the DMG2 for 3.x, the 4e DMG will be quite familiar. Most of the rules have been moved to the PHB, leaving MUCH more space available for giving advice to the DM on how to run a successful game. (If you DM 3.x and haven't read the DMG2, it's worth taking a look at, even if you don't choose to move up to 4e).
The DMG takes a back seat at the table. This is a benefit for both players and DMs. Players don't need to buy it for the magic items(which are now in the PHB) and well-prepared DM could get away with leaving the book at home.
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159 of 176 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
For some, great. For me, boring., July 6, 2008
This review is from: Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition (Hardcover)
I was really looking forward to 4ed. The idea that you can just pick-up and play without having to decipher lots of fine print and sub-rules and supplements and so on, this seemed like a good idea. (Although, frankly, the mastery of D&D minutiae is most certainly the appeal for some geeks.)
Surprisingly, I've had to literally force my way through the Player's Handbook. It's all so ... boring. Part of the fun of D&D (for me, as a DM) was reading through all the possibilities, and imagining more. 3ed had this in spades: You could do just about anything, and it gave a lot of room to go in interesting and unique directions.
4ed, meanwhile, maps everything out. Everything is classified in terms of how often you can use it, and you add this power or that feat at each level according to a unified formula. It reminds me more of Diablo than anything.
I'm not being dismissive, either. Really, 4ed is an impressive piece of work, streamlining and cleaning up a very messy game. I give it three (of five) stars because it's so easy to read and has big type with every detail clerly spelled out. (I don't like the artwork but that's my own taste.) It will surely be easier for people to casually pick up and play. What I can't figure out is why they--or really, why =I= would want to play it.
I gather that a lot of issues with 3ed came about because of pickup and competition games. There are such things as "powergamers" and "rules lawyers" and they found ways to drag the game down. And, of course, not all classes in previous editions were equally powerful, if you crunched the numbers. (It never occurred to me that this was a problem, but then I do everything I can to keep my players from focusing on the numbers.)
So, I guess 4ed is good in that regard. Every character boils down to one of four combat roles, and all the features they can acquire are centered around those roles, one of which they'll likely specialize in. (It's probably not as boring as I just made it sound there.)
Now, I run a very DM-centered game, and 4ed diminishes that greatly. The races have a back story which implies a pre-made, common world; Clerics pick from a variety of bland, pre-made deities; The magic items are listed in the PHB and a player can acquire them easily based on level, which implies a world where magic becomes banal at some level.
This is great for a pick-up game, I'm sure. And of course, the DM who doesn't care for all this can do as he pleases. But at some point, as you're sitting there thinking, "Well, I can ignore the two gratuitous elf races, drop the half-demon and half-dragon races, bring back the full nine alignments, assume that stuff that I miss, like gnomes, druids and illusionists will be back with the PHB II, bring back real multiclassing and prestige classes...", you have to wonder, "Why 4ed at all?"
Here's a fun fact: In AD&D (what's now referred to as 1ed), you rolled a d20 to attack and checked against a table to see if you hit. Then the monster rolled a d20, etc. Magic-users would use a spell, thieves would try to sneak attack, etc. But that was combat in the original. It was said to represent one minute of fighting, including all the feints, dodges, parries, tumbling, etc. It was detail free, basically, except as the DM described the action. There were no critical hits, there were very tight minimum and maximum ACs. There was no distinction between "touching" and "causing damage" when you hit; it was really very loose and vague.
Of course, the whole thing was a deliberate simplification. And since D&D's roots were in wargaming, with its considerable, meticulous measures and calculations, you can safely assume the creators weren't afraid of complexity. (I run 3ed like 1ed, essentially ignoring the absurdly extensive 3ed combat rules.)
4ed, on the other hand, is basically a tactical board game. The rules--I mean, =all= the rules--are pretty much set up to facilitate putting figurines on a grid and having them combat in turn, taking equal amounts of time, doing roughly similarly powered things, and measuring everything in terms of causing damage.
Hell, you could easily put the character's actions into a computer program and let the players use hotkeys to select which power they want--and I'm sure they're working on it.
A lot of people seem to love the new rules, and it's not that I looked at the changes and couldn't see exactly why they changed them and why that was a "good thing" (except for the elimination of half the alignments). I get it. I really do get it.
It just leaves me cold.
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68 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Depends On What You Like, November 9, 2008
This review is from: Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition (Hardcover)
Depending on what you are hoping for from this new edition, you will either love it or hate it. It is definitely not for everyone, as can be easily surmised from the highly mixed reviews. You should be clear about what you want out of the time and money you will invest before buying the books. Like anything in life, it depends on what type of experience you value. One thing is for sure - this edition is a very radical departure from the previous D&D and accordingly will provoke a radical reaction, depending on how much you liked or disliked playing 3rd/3.5 Edition D&D, how long you have been playing the game, and what sort of game you like.
If you are hoping for a more streamlined game that takes the bookishness and vast amounts of reading and reference out, and makes the combat system more interesting and fun, you will love it. It lends itself well to people who like fast-paced, action-packed games and want to spend as little time as possible on character and adventure design so they can just get straight to the action. This edition takes much of the time out character and adventure design and puts it on the action. This change can be quite fun if action is what you like. For the casual or new RPG fan who enjoys playing but does not have time to truly immerse themselves in details of the game, this edition is the best one yet. Most people who will buy these books will probably fit into this category. So for the casual gamer, this is a good edition to buy. It's definitely a more practical edition to play.
On the other hand, if you are a die-hard D&D nerd with dozens of books, custom made campaign worlds, and more than a decade of experience, hoping for an upgrade path to your current campaign and body of books to make it more playable while keeping the foundation, this is the abomination you have been dreading. The game is now so different from what you have grown to love that it will probably feel like an insult to your hard-earned mastery. If you love spending hours on character creation and adventure design, if you loved the quirks of the system and the differences in how characters progressed, if you loved the various attempts attempts in the rules to simulate reality, you will feel insulted by this edition and will probably want to return the books and just keep playing your old edition.
Players who began playing the game in its 1st and 2nd editions and have stuck with it for this long have grown to love the quirks of the D&D system and are by and large not pleased with this new edition because Hasbro/WotC have essentially ended the product line while keeping the brand, which is smart for them getting new customers but unfortunate and deceptive for the long-term fan base. They did this by throwing out a huge number of D&D conventions such as saving throws, spell memorization, bards, rolling for hit points, and basically everything that made the game quirky, unpredictable and hard for new players of the ADD (attention deficit disorder) generation to understand. It streamlined the game a lot, but also did away with much of its character as a unique rule system. The baby by and large went out with the bath water.
Thankfully for the die-hard D&D nerds there is an alternative, and it is called Pathfinder. Repeat: 4th Edition has ZERO backwards compatibility with any previous edition, meaning it is not possible to translate a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 3.5 edition character into a 4th Edition D&D game. This is a huge blunder on behalf of Hasbro in my opinion, and will cost the company a large part of its dedicated fan base, which will migrate to Pathfinder, stick with older editions, or try out new games altogether. This is not an upgrade path by any means.
While it is true that most of the 4th Edition rules have largely turned it into more of a fast-paced action/strategy game than a true RPG, this pace of gaming fits what some players want. This does not necessarily take the possibility of role-playing out of the game. Indeed, there is more time for role-playing now, at least for people who don't have time to get deep into the books, since the rules are now much less cumbersome (and also thereby less realistic).
In all fairness, however, D&D was always a combat-centric and less versatile game compared with other systems like GURPS and Mage. It always had a fair amount of adaptability to different playing styles, but the way your character advanced always had way more to do with defeating monsters than anything else. It is much less versatile than many other systems. If you think that fighting monsters is one of the less fun aspects of role-playing, or if you are more into the magical elements of the game than the hero aspect, you would probably have a whole lot more fun playing GURPS, Ars Magica, or Mage: The Ascension than any version whatsoever of D&D.
It is not hard to see what caused Hasbro to take the direction it did with this game. The progression of D&D from 2nd to 3rd Edition by and large made the game more complicated. Specialized terms like THAC0 were discarded in favor of the more general bonus system and the weird proficiency system was replaced by the more sensical skill system. But the new system of bonuses quickly became quite cumbersome and actually involved more calculation for most things than the 2nd Edition equivalents, especially when it came to calculating experience. This resulted in a more detailed and realistic game, but also one that took far more time to learn and play. The complexity of the rules actually became a major obstacle for many players, who were more confused about the changes than excited about the additional detail and versatility.
4th Edition reversed course and did away with that direction of evolution, much like a child destroying a sand castle. While much of the new 3rd Edition rules needed some serious streamlining, many people agree that Hasbro went a bit too far and destroyed a lot of good things about the game that people had grown to love. New players or people unfamiliar or daunted with the old structures will probably be excited about this new edition, whereas people who labored to make the 3rd/3.5 Editions work for them and met with some degree of success will see 4th Edition as an insult to their hard-earned efforts. 3rd/3.5 Edition required a lot of time to become familiar enough with to be usable, but once that time had been invested, it was perhaps the most versatile and adaptable edition and could be a lot of fun with players who were fluent in the rules.
4th Edition, by contrast, is a usable with far less time investment. For example, character creation now takes only about 30 minutes. Putting an adventure together as DM take easily half the time it used to. The new pre-made modules require much less reference to the core books. If you are fairly new to the system, you will spend far more time actually playing and far less time reading.
A couple more points worth mentioning - you need a solid five people to make a 4th Edition game work because the mechanics have changed to become much more strategic. The game, sadly, is no longer workable with a DM and one player or a DM and two players. This is very limiting and makes it harder to get a game together. Also, while non-combat elements are certainly possible to integrate into the game, there are few rules to provide for them. Last but not least, all measurements for spells and weapons have been reduced to "squares" instead of feet, making combat virtually impossible without the use of a board and miniatures unless conversion is done. This is not terribly difficult, but is still a pain for those who prefer to play without miniatures.
All in all, this is a complete game redesign. It represents a major split in the continuum of the game, and will most definitely split most of the fan base into two different camps - one going toward the 4th Edition style of play, and the other going toward Pathfinder or remaining where they are.
For my part, I like the Revised 2nd Edition of D&D the best. It is only slightly more complicated than 4th Edition in terms of its mechanics, but is also quite expandable and to me strikes the best balance between realism and practicality. The real kicker for me, however, is the fact that it contains the best and most imaginative campaign setting ever released for D&D, with by far the best art ever - Planescape!
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