So, what do you think of D&D 4th edition

[M Faulkner]

From what I am hearing and reading (which is not alot), I don't like some of the things they are planning to do. What are your opinions?

 

[Count_Zero]

Personally, I don't care. At this point, I am refusing to buy based on principle. I have spent a lot of money on 3 and 3.5. I have enough material to last me a VERY long time. I used to be one to keep up with the newest rules version, but I have since stopped caring. 3.5 is a good, robust system and any issues I have with it I can fix with house rules. JMHO.

- Josh

 

[M Faulkner]

Personally, I don't care. At this point, I am refusing to buy based on principle. I have spent a lot of money on 3 and 3.5. I have enough material to last me a VERY long time. I used to be one to keep up with the newest rules version, but I have since stopped caring. 3.5 is a good, robust system and any issues I have with it I can fix with house rules. JMHO.

- Josh

I like your way of thinking! I am happy with 3.5. I just don't get why 4e is coming out so soon after 3.5 and the fact that it is so different. The only thing I can think of is the $ making aspect.

 

[Dion]

I think that there is no reason to believe that 4th edition D&D will not focus on miniture use and feats, so I plan on getting only the 4th edition DMG and Monster Manual, and use these to supplement my house rules, and to inspire my sword and sorcery settings.

 

[Dion]

I think that there is no reason to believe that 4th edition D&D will not focus on miniture use and feats, so I plan on getting only the 4th edition DMG and Monster Manual, and use these to supplement my house rules, and to inspire my sword and sorcery settings.

Feats are like a two edged sword. On one hand they give new players something to focus their abilities on so they don't feel like their ideas are stupid and a waist everyones time. You know what I mean new players mostly just sit there slack jawed with a blank stare in their faces, hardly involved in the game at all. Feats are a great tool to get new players involved in the game. But unfortunately they also require more rules for the DM to memorize. It would be better if they got rid of most of the classes and cut it down to just the four basic classes, fighter, wizard, priest, and rogue, while at the same time keeping the feats. By reducing the number of classes they would also be reducing the number of feats. Minitures are great, but they are coast prohibitive and require a lot of space. I think they should be left to the D&D grog-nards (if there is such a thing). I think they look outstanding, but they don't do anything to facilitate game play. I feel that they do nothing but make the game LOOK good. I hope 4th edition is real good, but I think the game has to many rules to make players think they can try anything. One of the best things about role playing is when players feel that the only limitation is their own imagination. Excessive rules limit the players ability to use their imagination. The less rules the better. The best rule ever written for a role playing game is "the only rule is that there no rules".

 

[Count_Zero]

The best rule ever written for a role playing game is "the only rule is that there no rules".

Now THAT is a DM after my own heart....

- Josh

 

[rdw5150]

Hi!

My gaming group has listened to my complain about 4e for months. This is all about corporate greed and nothing else. Is 3.5 perfect, no. Neither will 4e. They need to sell books pure an simple, so they spin some yarn about needed a newer, better game.


OK now that I have that off my chest:clown:

From what I am hearing, some changes are for the good. But all in all I am not liking a lot of what I hear. I will reserve judgment until I at least see a copy (via friends copy or whatever) of the book and give it a little study.

Of course, I did not like a lot of what I heard about 3E, but in the end I think its a better game than 1st/2nd.

Getting rid of feats is OK in my book as I did not like the programmed "feel" to them. Though I did not think they are lessening the importance of miniatures. I know in the sample character I have seen one of the Ranger abilities (I think it was ranger anyway) allows him to take a shift one square before or after an attack.

Here are some sample characters from the DnD experience (whatever that is):

http://picasaweb.google.com/gertiebarden/4eCharacterSheets


Peace

Roger

 

[M Faulkner]

I could be wrong, but I don't think they are getting rid of feats. From what a friend of mine said, there will be more feats to choose from.

 

[rdw5150]

hi!

i do not remember seeing Feats on the 4E character sheet example. Then again I did not look at them closely...

Just looked at them again, and I guess they do have feats, but if you look they do not appear to be like they were in the past.

Peace

Roger

 

[Dr Zaius]

Look, if they don't sell books they go out of business, it's just that simple. And games like World of Warcraft have put a huge dent in the profits of tabletop RPG companies, and they know it.

If they don't do something to stay relevant and grab the attention of newer gamers, D&D will simply fade away. They can't make money by charging monthly fees like WoW, and the exponential rate at which printing costs have risen over the last decade has been a nightmare for publishers of tabletop products.

So either they innovate and create new products that will keep D&D relevant, or they accept defeat at the hands of Wii, Xbox, and Wow. If they create quality products, I suspect people will buy them. If they don't, well, they won't.

 

[Count_Zero]

Look, if they don't sell books they go out of business, it's just that simple. And games like World of Warcraft have put a huge dent in the profits of tabletop RPG companies, and they know it.

If they don't do something to stay relevant and grab the attention of newer gamers, D&D will simply fade away. They can't make money by charging monthly fees like WoW, and the exponential rate at which printing costs have risen over the last decade has been a nightmare for publishers of tabletop products.

So either they innovate and create new products that will keep D&D relevant, or they accept defeat at the hands of Wii, Xbox, and Wow. If they create quality products, I suspect people will buy them. If they don't, well, they won't.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the principles of capitalism as well as the next guy. My point is instead of coming out with a new rules system that obsoletes everything thousands of people have bought over the last 10 years and discontinuing releases under said rules system, why not innovate a new game, and continue to come out with quality expansions under the existing rule system? That way, you expand your market share into a new niche (for you anyway) and customers don't get disenfranchised by having to completely update the system to use new suppliments for their campaigns.

JMHO....:shy:

- Josh

 

[rdw5150]

Don't get me wrong, I understand the principles of capitalism as well as the next guy. My point is instead of coming out with a new rules system that obsoletes everything thousands of people have bought over the last 10 years and discontinuing releases under said rules system, why not innovate a new game, and continue to come out with quality expansions under the existing rule system? That way, you expand your market share into a new niche (for you anyway) and customers don't get disenfranchised by having to completely update the system to use new suppliments for their campaigns.

JMHO....:shy:

- Josh

Agreed!

Plus I do not think its even been 10 years for 3E has it? Talk about pulling a Microsoft:>)))))))

People will buy new games. People will buy offical 3.5 stuff. Its not WOTC's fault there is a glut of products (a lot of them just plain out bad) for D20. True gamers like us will buy a new game if we hear its good.

Peace

Roger

 

[mr_clark]

I must admit I have only skimmed over the books so far, but I kinda like the new system.
It is admittedly completly different from 3.5 I've been playing so far, but I think my groups and me will sooner or later take a look into it and then play a little of both editions simultanously.
What is obvious with ed4 so far are the steps taken by Wizards to make D&D more compatible with computer based games, wich isn't neccessarily a bad thing. Especially changing the way magic works is (as far as I understzood it until now) now a little bit more logical then the spells per day we had before. Apart from that I think the system is also a little easier to understand for new players, but well I didn't think the old one was overly hard...

 

[M Faulkner]

I must admit I have only skimmed over the books so far, but I kinda like the new system.
It is admittedly completly different from 3.5 I've been playing so far, but I think my groups and me will sooner or later take a look into it and then play a little of both editions simultanously.
What is obvious with ed4 so far are the steps taken by Wizards to make D&D more compatible with computer based games, wich isn't neccessarily a bad thing. Especially changing the way magic works is (as far as I understzood it until now) now a little bit more logical then the spells per day we had before. Apart from that I think the system is also a little easier to understand for new players, but well I didn't think the old one was overly hard...

Thanks for the review. I haven't looked 4E over yet. Anyone else have an AAR on 4E?

 

[Palantir]

Like to hear more comments from players who have the 4th edition and how player friendly it is.

I've played "D&D" before it was "D&D" when it was a small addition in the back of TSR's "Chainmail" book. Which then became D&D's the "White Box" edition.

The game has gone from the original concept of "guidelines" to create your own fantasy world to the hard and fast "Official" only way to role-play your world of D&D. Then came the next only official way to play- AD&D. Followed by the next only official way to play AD&D 2nd edition, then 3rd edition and now 4th edition.

The new Official 5th Edition is probably well under development already.

Those free wheeling days are long gone, replaced by hundreds of pages & multiple books of rules. You don't have to follow them of course, I quit following the "official" line when edition 2 came out. Since then I have molded my own set of rules etc. out of multiple systems with a campaign setting I've ran for nearly 20 years. (Basically Rolemaster w/D&D type spells)
I still run it free-style using all those "rules" as guidelines for MY world. What I dislike most is spell throwing players wanting to dissect each spell down to the exact book-specifications. (Tell me what you're throwing & where, I'll take it from there: if I don't want your "book" 1000 hitpoint fireball to kill everyone in the room to keep the storyline moving I'll make sure it doesn't- I'm the DM I can make it so)

My current group of 7 players just finished the "Grand World Campaign" involving 26 full campaigns in 4 game years after 6 years of real time. And are you ready? The highest lvl players (3) are 13th. (Yes my world goes day by day and characters have died and the "top" lvls, Kings etc are 20'ish.)

However, I see the draw to make D&D a more fluid game as the MMO-role-playing games are. If all your millions of online potential customers play one way why not modify to appeal to them? But to slap a new official edition out so soon after 3.5 appeared seems to be a grab at the big bucks (or admitting 3.5 sucked).

Either way if 4.0 pulls MMO players into table top "role-playing" it can't be all bad.

 

[jwb3]

But to slap a new official edition out so soon after 3.5 appeared seems to be a grab at the big bucks (or admitting 3.5 sucked).

I think it's more appropriate to compare the release date for this (2008) to the release date for 3.0 (2000), since the fact that there even is a 3.5 is basically an admission of problems with its ancestor. But that doesn't void your point, since even by that standard, the time lapse of 8 years is shorter than with the previous updates (about 11 years each for 1st => 2nd and 2nd => 3rd).

Not to mention that you'd think that if they were going to go so far as to make an interim .5 edition -- because the .0 version had so many problems -- then the end result ought to be more stable, and have greater longevity, than previous "full-level" edition changes. It basically got three additional years of playtesting by the entire D&D-playing audience, after all!

If people think that 3.5 continued to suck, then I'd be real curious to hear why. I never played it; my group tried 3.0, decided they didn't like it, and didn't even bother upgrading to 3.5 when it came out. All I know about 3.5 is that the books are better organized and easier to read, that the ranger changed somewhat, and a few other bits like that. Did they not change the parts that sucked the most?

And if so, then what does that say about 4th? I've only seen a little bit of one friend's 4th edition books, but I know this much: The one thing I thought was worst about 3.0/3.5, the confusing way they broke actions up into "standard" and "move" and all that, is still present in 4.0. And the one thing I thought was best about 3.0/3.5, the way you could build your character out of individual levels of different classes, seems to be gone from 4.0.


John

 

[Dr Zaius]

How much of the 4th edition is now available?

 

[jwb3]

How much of the 4th edition is now available?

My friend got the boxed set, containing the PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual in a protective sleeve.


John

 

[Dr Zaius]

I saw some of the new stuff at Barnes & Noble the other day, but I didn't have an opportunity to look through it. I wish they would go to a different art style on the book covers.

 

[Portal]

I dig the 3.5 version of the D&D game. The only aspects I felt had opportunity for significant improvement were:

1) Effects of damage on character performance. The whole "perfectly fine until 0 HP" thing is annoying. I always house-ruled this when DMing by placing living combatants who drop below 25% of their max HPs automatically at "Fatigued" status. Already Fatigued characters would become Exhausted.

2) Skill group consolidation. Probably too many different types of skills to throw rank points against.

3) Single-monster, single-page in the Monster Manuals. A 2nd Edition method which never should have been taken away.

4) Reduce emphasis on magic items in forming character power and potential.

4th Edition struck out big-time. The whole "Bloodied" character status is a near meaningless disappointment which didn't address Issue #1. Skills and multi-classing are excessively restricted and oversimplified. The only improvement was the monster presentation layout as seen in Issue #3. Magic items were de-emphasized but now the item construction rules are excessively simplified. Mucking around with available character races and classes was completely unnecessary. Since when is "Dragonborn" a classic D&D character archetype?

It seems like 4th Ed. is a throw-back to the 1970s perspective of the game, which flies in the face of RPG evolution and learnings over the last 20 years. Big disappointment.