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."

Comments

Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil are Deprecated

[jpatters]

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.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[flyingsquid]

Not I. My girlfriend plays DnD with me. Although, she doesn't think pretending to be a wizard with a "Sexuality Wand" +3 is too exciting in bed...

Considering that the average male's wand is +5 to +6, you should be able to see why she's not getting excited.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[magical_mystery_meat]

I bet she really gets hot when you put on your robe and wizard hat

Big change from previous versions, but still good

[El Gigante de Justic]

I got a chance to view the books early, thanks to some leaked scans, and so far I like what I see; however, many changes may tick off long time players, especially changes to the standard races.

    From what I've read so far, the main good things about 4th edition that I've seen so far are:

• A lot less book keeping is necessary, especially for high level spell casters. DMs also have less book keeping for high level enemies, as they don't have dozens of spells or spell like abilities and minion creatures do static damage and only 1 hp). If you've ever run a high level battles against a half dozen clerics or wizards, you can see an immediate advantage.
  
• Even at first level, characters and monsters are generally tougher, so 1st level characters are living in constant fear of being killed by 1 hit. Some might complain this is lame ("why not just start at 5th-8th level?"), but really, it makes sense, and actually sets 1st level heroes apart from your average commoner.
  
• The Cleric is no longer a required party member, as everyone can self heal.
  
  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.

Re:Rulebook?

[h4rm0ny]

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.

Still Using AD&D 2.5 Edition

[The Insane One]

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.