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337 of 380 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A radical change of pace, June 6, 2008
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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69 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
For some, great. For me, boring., July 6, 2008
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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76 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Much Function, Little Form, July 15, 2008
So, after telling myself that I wasn't going to do it, that I was happy with 3E and that I didn't need to go through the "D&D arms race" again, I finally broke down and picked up the three new 4E corebooks. Although I did not purchase the slipcase edition, I figured that this would be the best place for this review, as I did purchase the three books at once, and I'm trying to review the system as a whole, as opposed to any single book.
I'd like to be able to give this game an exact 2.5-star rating, as I feel that it falls neatly along that line, but as Amazon seems to want to restrict me to whole stars, I'm going to use the D&D method and round down.
"Ease of use" seemed to be the watchword for the designers of this new edition, and pretty much everything in the system, from the nuts-and-bolts math of "add half your level to everything," to the choices present in character creation, to the revision in combat options, seems to be pointed in that direction. It's hard to create an useless character in this game, and that eternal hobgoblin of game balance -- combat -- has been addressed by focusing a large amount of energy into making sure that everyone comports themselves equally well on the battlemat.
Gone is BAB; instead, every character adds half their level to the appropriate stat bonus for their roll. Yes, this means that your wizard is as combat-trained as your friend's fighter, with only your Strength bonus as a difference. Gone are saving throws; the old saves from 3E have been translated into defenses similar to AC that the "attacker" (be that a monster, trap or other) rolls against. Anything that offers a save merely asks that you roll a 10 or better on a d20, again guaranteeing that every character has an equal chance to save against a prolonged effect. Even armor class has been altered quite a bit; armor itself provides less protection, but again you get to add half your level, in a move reminiscent of the Defensive Bonus from such games as Iron Heroes (in fact, Mearls contributed to this edition, and both the AC revision and healing surges are his brainchildren from that previous game).
Gone is multiclassing; a broad range of feats and the ability to take Paragon Paths at 10th level and Epic Destinies at 20th step into the gap, but allow nowhere near the breadth of options found in 3E. Gone are the grappling rules, replaced by the simpler "Grab" option; gone, too, are sundering and disarming attacks. Gone are the long and often bewildering lists of spells available to spellcasters; what they're left with are the cream of the crop in combat ability, but offer little outside of that arena (those "utility" powers that are still available are generally unusable more than once a day).
It's a game that knows what it wants, and it's pretty sure it knows what you want, too. And that's not exactly a bad thing. Given the options present in games like Exalted or Deadlands (or, God forbid, GURPS), I've seen players go into Decision Paralysis that completely shut down their ability to create a character or go through a simple combat, due to one overriding thought -- "What if I choose poorly?" You can't choose poorly in 4E. You copy your stats from the Players' Handbook to your character sheet, fill in a few blanks (with a wink and a nod as to what you should be filling them with), and proceed to move your character through his routine, confident that he'll never underperform (or overperform) when things go south and the swords come out.
Ultimately, it's a very safe game decision-wise, but it's true that it also lacks the ability to accomodate a very wide variety of character types. So, for example, if you were hoping to focus most of your character's abilities on skills and languages, making her the party's "knowledge battery" at the expense of her combat prowess, you'll need a new character concept. Skills are either trained or untrained (there is no accumulation of skill points from level to level), and again, half your level comes into play, so no one character can really be more or less skilled than another; they're only proficient in different areas. And while it's true that WotC will no doubt offer us a buffet of additional powers in upcoming supplements and through "D&D Insider," those powers will still be laid over the safety-net foundation of the core rules, and doubtless balanced to be completely even with other powers from other classes.
In the end, it's a hard game to screw up, but it's a hard game to excel at, too, simply because all decision trees present in the game have been perfectly balanced for exceeding, almost painful, equality. True, this eliminates a lot of the nightmares of the previous edition, but it also eliminates a bit of the beauty, leaving us with a game that contains a lot of function, but very little form.
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