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Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Launches
darkwing_bmf writes "Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition rulebooks are now available. There's a review up at EuroGamer. Unfortunately, the online tools portion, D&D Insider, isn't ready yet."
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From what I've read so far, the main good things about 4th edition that I've seen so far are:
The main complaints I have so far is that they haven't released rules in the Monster Manual for creating your own monsters from scratch and figuring out appopriate levels, and the death penalty is really almost too minor. Raise dead still takes 10 minutes to cast, and the cost does go up as your level goes up, but the penalty is only -1 to all rolls until you rest for 6 hours. I appreciate that they were trying to lessen death effects and other affects that take your character effectively out of game (Medusa gaze, Illithid mind blast, etc), but by having such a minimal penalty for death, you'd have to wonder why any fears death.
Some will certainly complain that 4th edition is too MMO like (especially like WOW), but the new character building rules do admittedly enforce character balance quite well through all levels.
Let's see:
-No more wizards/clerics/etc saying, "Crap, I just blew all my spells in that one encounter, I need to rest for 8 hours!"
-Much simplified rules for DMs creating encounters and adventures, as well as putting rewards in those encounters. (This is a complete overhaul, and hard to really give too many examples)
-No more random hit point amounts every level, in addition, a larger hit point total at level 1. (No more fighters rolling a 1 at first level, etc)
-New death/dying system, that scales as you level. (ie. no more -10 hp and you're dead crap)
Honestly, if you're curious, go to http://www.enworld.com/ and look around. They have put together a full preview PHB based on pre-release information. Should give you a good idea of what to expect. 4e is definately not an expansion. It's almost completely overhauled from 3.5.
They simplified a lot of things. All combat actions are basically the same now, mage, warrior, cleric, whatever. You declare your attack, be it weapon, spell, whatever, roll your check vs their resist check, and if yours is higher you do damage.
No more memorized spells at all...you learn, "Otlukes flaming bunghole" you can cast it every round like you were swinging a sword.
Some abilities are "per encounter" meaning you can only use it once per combat. Others are "per day", so once per day.
I don't know. I haven't finished going through the rules yet, but I'm not pleased. A lot of things that I never thought "had to be said" are now filled in for you...like the "party role" for your class...Fighters now have "tanking" abilities that "force" the monster to attack them...What the hell is that about? Didn't everyone and their mother used to role play that? Instead of being a simple framework, D&D is more like a complete game.
Some people may be pleased with that, but to me its like someone pre-chewed my dinner.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Nothing is "forcing" the opponent to only attack the tank. The starter ability, for the fighter at least, makes perfect sense:
1) The fighter "marks" a target after attacking it (read: scary guy who really knows how to use a sword is actively engaged in slicing at you).
2) If that target makes an attack on someone other than the fighter, the fighter gets a free attack of opportunity (read: if someone is actively engaging you in sword play, it leaves you wide open when you turn to bash someone else).
It's dumb to ignore the obvious threat just because someone else looks like an easy target; you can feel free to attack the easy target, but that doesn't make the obvious threat any less threatening.
In editions before 3/3.5 the Cleric's biggest value was as a healer. If you had several of them in the party, they could play different roles but if you only had one, he was mister medic and that's basically it.
3/3.5 replaced that problem with a different one. The designers were so desperate to make the class attractive, it became the most powerful class in the game with good combat skills and hit points, healing magic, and the ability to cast a whole host of effective combat spells and "buffs".
And "destroyers of D&D"? Give me a break. Ever play any of the following RPGs: Warhammer RPG, HERO, GURPS, Rifts, Rolemaster, Vampire: the Masquerade, Middle Earth RPG, or the (original) Star Wars RPG? I believe they all came out well before Wizards of the Coast produced 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons. Each has plenty of flaws, but if you've played a few of them it will give you enough perspective to see that all versions of Dungeons and Dragons have some ridiculous inconsistencies and poor design choices that interfere with or downright euthanize fun gameplay.
Wizards of the Coast didn't destroy Dungeons and Dragons. They just rearranged the problems, and I bet you're mostly angry because you have nostalgia for the particular set of problems you enjoyed when you first played some previous edition.