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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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New alignment system: Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil.
um, no.
I would have respected the choice to get rid of alignment, but this is a boneheaded move. The problem with alignment (with bad role players anyway) is that it reinforces trite stereotypes. This just gives you fewer trite stereotypes to choose from.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Considering that the average male's wand is +5 to +6, you should be able to see why she's not getting excited.
I bet she really gets hot when you put on your robe and wizard hat
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.
The new rules are very much more elegant. They play quickly in all sorts of areas, from actual combat to monster customization and NPC creation. Character classes are very well balanced with each other and the "sweet spot" that you got in the mid-levels where you were tough enough to survive with good tactics but not so powerful the game became broken... well the game plays well at all levels now. Production values are also very high and I don't think when you read the books and grok the rules, you can really disagree with any of this. There are many well-thought out refinements to the system.
However, the game, imo, seriously suffers on the role-playing side. Non-combat skills are all but gone, character abilities are designed solely for their tactical interest in combat with little thought to justifying them in the game or whether they make the remotest sense and playing with table-top miniatures is all but compulsory now. There are also serious concerns being voiced about whether the classes are now too balanced for their own good. If you can be a wizard firing off endless Magic Missiles (they're at will now), or a ranger firing off endless arrows and both have similar range and damage, you ask yourself whether everything has become a little meaningless through nothing being better than anything else.
It's a difficult one that will only be resolved through trying it out. There's much good stuff in the new game, but there's a serious worry that it's lost it's sole as an actual role-playing game. We'll have to see.
Selling like Charm Person scrolls on a Saturday night, though.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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.
I want to say Mod up, but honestly I can't think of what any of the local game stores has done for me or my kids.
I'm not trolling here, and I usually share your sentimate but honestly the last time I went into one My main goal was to get my son out as fast as possible. What a bunch of foul mouthed SOBs.
Gaming stores aren't for people who want to run a business, they're for people who want to show off their gaming collection.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes. Those boys will continue to be virgins. Continuing in the tradition of their fathers, and their father's fathers.
As amazing as it sounds, our gaming group, who has been meeting for about 20 years now, still use the AD&D 2.0 edition with the Skills & Powers expansion. Some of the same customization without the lethality and long battles of RoleMaster. Since we all have extensive libraries of these older 2nd edition books, the odds are not good that we'll migrate to YAEODD (Yet Another Edition Of Dungeons & Dragons).
I remember the WotC Slashdot questions regarding the release of the 4th edition. One of the questions was why we should bother to upgrade our libraries since D&D edition 5 is probably just around the corner? The answer was, and I'll paraphrase since I'm getting old, "Because it's just better." Great logic. I read that as "We need more money."
Of course, a lot of our group play World of Warcraft between games and from all indications, 4th edition is tabletop WoW.
We don't need rules for how much you can earn playing an instrument in a village of population X, there's no argument there. But not only have almost all non-combat skills been removed (incl. the generic catchalls you could use such as Profession), but most abilities aren't even defined except in the context of combat. Fey Pact warlocks can teleport after downing a foe. Can they teleport outside of combat? Under what circumstances? Do they carry round pockets full of bunnies so they can kill them if they ever need to teleport? We don't know, we're never told and there are numerous examples of the world just stopping at the edge of combat. Many players enjoy being able to say that they are a world class card player or whatever. The feeling you get from reading the books is very much that it's all about combat. The emphasis is bad.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.