Another Review of 4e

[ptolemy18]

So, I just bought the 4e rulebooks and these are my impressions.

I would say that, to use D&D metaphors, it compares to 3rd edition much the same way that the Red Box Basic D&D set (which I first started playing in 1980 in elementary school) compares to the "Advanced" D&D rules (which I didn't really understand until I was in college).

The art is good, the books look good.

There is a predictable reduction in the number of "generic" monsters (the 3rd edition Monster Manual had a 40-page bestiary of normal beasts like lizards, hawks, sharks and monkeys for comparison values) and an expansion in the number of "branded" or "trademarked" monsters which are more exciting to 10-year-olds and can be made into exciting miniatures (Foulspawn! Abominations! Bone Horrors! Not just Lizardfolk, Blackscale Lizardfolk! Not just a Crocodile, a Visejaw Crocodile! etc.) This is understandable, although it does remind me a *bit* of Yu-Gi-Oh, with its intentionally obfuscatory names in order to be able to trademark the names of all the cards (e.g. "Misairuzame" instead of "Missile Shark").

The play experience is much simpler in a lot of ways. The DMG has a lot of good advice for beginner DMs, as it should. And the stronger 1st-level characters will eliminate a lot of disappointed "Why am I so weak?" complaints on the part of newbie gamers.

I have some problems with the character types, though.... although this is basically personal bias coming as someone who played 1e~3e. I disagree with Michael Zenke's assertion in the Wired review that "every character can now do something exciting instead of just hitting the enemy" -- that's not quite true, because although fighters, rogues and other wuxia-type sword-wielding ass-kickers have been given a lot of cool powers, wizards, clerics and other spellcasting classes have been MAJORLY reduced in complexity. (As I assume everyone reading this already knows...) The amount of book space devoted to wizards, clerics and their powers is a tiny fraction of what it was in the previous edition.

Zenke attempts to pass this off as an "advantage", but anyone I've known who ever wanted to play a wizard or cleric, adored the complexity and bookkeeping aspect. That's the whole point of playing one, or was. The real reason that their powers were cut back so much is, basically, (1) they took up an inordinate amount of space in the old rulebook, (2) they were the most powerful classes, which I always thought of as the fantasy-setting-appropriate due reward for players inclined to do the bookkeeping, but players of other types of characters may have seen as unfair -- do you see why I'm mentioning the personal bias element? ~_~ and (3) Mike Mearls is an avowed partisan who loves pure-fighting-type characters.

CLERICS: Why does the cleric's only 1st level "healing" power involve making an attack? WTH??? :/ Is the standard 1-3e "I run over to them and heal them with a touch" SO revolting to newbie players? Gimme a break! It's called choices, it'd be nice to *occasionally* have a choice of healing OR attacking! Healing OR attacking...! Oh well. I just find it bizarre that the paladin, with "Lay on Hands", now feels more like the "healer" class than the Cleric does. The lack of deity-specific abilities, apart from feats, is also completely lame.

WIZARDS: Like the clerics, totally nerfed... although actually I'd say the wizards came off a little better, they are a little closer to their recognizable core identity. But still, to me the stripped-downness of it all it's pretty shocking. I mean, so many similar spells... you don't even really *need* one spell called "Iceball" and one spell called "Fireball" and so forth. (Yes, I know this example doesn't actually exist in 4e.) All you need is a Feat called "Energy Substitution" and then you can be an ice wizard, fire wizard, whatever you want, just with one basic type of spell.... :/ but apparently this kind of customization is too much for D&D4e... Dude, I could play literally any kind of 4e wizard by just taking the "Energy Substitution" and "Sculpt Spell" feats in 3e... (and in fact, once I did, coincidentally).

The rituals are very cool, and make up for the nerfing of the aforementioned classes, to a great extent. (But huh, Raise Dead at just 8th level? ~_~ You can Raise Dead before you can Fly now?) But still, in both cases, classes which had hundreds of builds have been reduced to classes that have, maybe, a dozen or two dozen builds. For a newbie, it's not a big deal. But for an experienced gamer who is used to having lots of options, it really sucks. The vastly increased number of class-specific powers, at the cost of non-class-specific feats and spells -- at the cost of the whole idea of spells -- is to blame for this, I think.

Personally, I think the fighting-type characters' new powers are AWESOME. I think the pushing, pulling & sliding figures around the miniatures mat is AWESOME. The second wind ability is AWESOME. But the total nerfing of magical abilities is completely frustrating. Reading the Monster Manual was also a frustrating experience. On the one hand -- yes, every monster has lots of cool combat powers, it's awesome. On the other hand -- for someone like me who wants a SIMULATION (da-da-dum!! ) of a game world the lack of thorough stats for animals, etc. (as in 3e, one of my favorite things about the 3e Monster Manual) was a disappointment. Also, the monsters in general just come off as big bags of hit points and abilities, since every one of their abilities is combat-oriented. So yeah, in 3e a green dragon (for instance) can do weird stuff which never comes up in play, like use the "corrupt water" ability -- that's not necessarily meant to be used in combat, that's for out-of-combat stuff, that's so the DM has a better idea of what kind of evil crap the green dragon is getting up to when it's NOT attacking the player characters! ~_~ That's so you know just what the green dragon is capable of doing in The Ecology of Your Frickin' Game World! For my style of DMing, that stuff is USEFUL! And that's why the whole idea of a general spell list, like in 3e, is so fricking amazing -- because you have a magical list which includes Every Magical Effect You Can Imagine. Now, in 4e? You've got to rely on hand-waving. The bad guy summons a bunch of other bad guys? Hand-waving. The bad guy makes a minion's head explode? Hand-waving. The fact that Goblin #1 is a really wimpy Level 1 goblin and Goblin #2 is a Level 8 Goblin Skirmisher? It's not 'cause Goblin #2 has PC levels, it's hand-waving. Not a big deal, hand-waving is part of any DM's toolbox, but come on. A little more depth & consistency is nice.

In general -- the good thing about 4e is that it looks a LOT easier to pick up and play, and very well-presented. But the character creation options are SO much simpler and more limited than the 3e player's handbook, that to me as an experienced roleplayer, it's definitely the inferior game. For a newbie? Well, for a newbie, 4e is probably superior, because it's a lot easier to handle, a lot faster to make a character, a lot easier not to get drowned in choices.

So -- in my opinion -- looks fun. But looks more fun for newbies than for experienced players.

What I'd like to do is house-rule ALL the spells from 3e back into the game, and THEN play it.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON MINIATURES: In one major way, Wizards has made a big decision which will forever influence the type of people who play D&D and the audience they're aiming at... and that is, to emphasize miniatures and battlegrids to the extent that they do. To emphasize the whole tactical element. Of course, it was like this in 3e, too, but 4e goes a step further. I actually kind of like this tactical element myself, to an extent, BUT... BUT... there are tons of other role-players I know who have no patience for the "moving miniatures around on a mat" aspect and, although they may enjoy the aspect of "role-playing a character" and "rolling dice," seem to NEVER be able to get behind the whole aspect of the miniatures. ("I run up to him and attack him!" "Sorry, he's 7 squares away, and you can only move 6 squares!" "WTF!?? I hate this game! I can't be bothered to remember how many squares it is!" :/ ) These people may be excellent role-players and very fun to play with, but the miniatures are just A Bridge Too Far. Or rather, A Bridge Too Nerdy.

Seriously, in my experience, there really are a lot of role-players who dislike miniatures, or who can simply never be bothered to learn the rules about them. Maybe they're by definition casual gamers and won't buy any gaming stuff, so Wizards is intentionally not marketing to them. I dunno. I'm not one of 'em, but I know a lot of 'em.

So D&D has increasingly allied itself with the board-gaming and collectible-card-gaming aspect of the industry, as opposed to a RPG like, say, "Vampire" in the 1990s, which had very abstract rules and was very much about the social aspect. Can I blame D&D for taking this path? No, certainly not since the D&D game itself originally came from wargaming... and I also understand their pragmatic desire to sell more miniatures. And I do like the tactical number-crunch aspect myself. But I think the current edition suffers a bit much from presenting EVERYTHING in terms of numbers and "squares" and miniatures, and eliminating a lot of the more evocative and weird and "indefinable" powers in previous editions, which generally belonged to the spell lists of the wizard and cleric characters. Instead, in 4e, virtually everything has a combat application, and combat is ever more the core of the game. The result may actually be beneficial for the core D&D game as a game, but for people (like me) who became fond of using the d20/3e rules for simulations of various hodgepodge campaign worlds (like the Green Ronin Mythic Vistas books) it is much more difficult to use 4e for that purpose.

Okay, signing off!

[TimeOut]

Interesting review. I agree with your experience concerning miniatures and battle maps. I absolutly love tactical combat, so starting to play them as such was awesome for me (We never did that in 3.x). Still there are a lot of people who think that this "degenerates into a nonimaginative board game"... But that is why we have the ability to choose what we want to play.

Now some comments:

CLERICS: Why does the cleric's only 1st level "healing" power involve making an attack? WTH??? :/ Is the standard 1-3e "I run over to them and heal them with a touch" SO revolting to newbie players? Gimme a break! It's called choices, it'd be nice to *occasionally* have a choice of healing OR attacking! Healing OR attacking...! Oh well. I just find it bizarre that the paladin, with "Lay on Hands", now feels more like the "healer" class than the Cleric does. The lack of deity-specific abilities, apart from feats, is also completely lame.

The basic class power of the Cleric (Healing Word, page 62) is not an attack and is usable from range.

that's not quite true, because although fighters, rogues and other wuxia-type sword-wielding ass-kickers have been given a lot of cool powers, wizards, clerics and other spellcasting classes have been MAJORLY reduced in complexity.

Yes, they are reduced in complexity. But in my opinion this is a Good Thing, because now the amount of choices for your players is equal.

No longer can the wizard player "for the price of increased complexity" do four times as much as the "simple" fighter. Actually this was the reason I never bothered to play mundane characters in 3.x. They had no options, they were no fun. 4e changed that.

for someone like me who wants a SIMULATION (da-da-dum!! )

Honestly, I believe that 4e is the completely wrong game for someone looking for a simulation. 4e is a Game and embraces this concept. 4e rules don't describe or simulate a world, they streamline and create gameplay.

[Morrus]

Originally Posted by ptolemy18

CLERICS: Why does the cleric's only 1st level "healing" power involve making an attack? WTH??? :/ Is the standard 1-3e "I run over to them and heal them with a touch" SO revolting to newbie players? Gimme a break! It's called choices, it'd be nice to *occasionally* have a choice of healing OR attacking! Healing OR attacking...! Oh well. I just find it bizarre that the paladin, with "Lay on Hands", now feels more like the "healer" class than the Cleric does.

Healing Word does not require an attack.

[theNater]

Very interesting post. Some things I agree with, some things I (vehemently) don't, but one thing I really feel a need to speak to:

Originally Posted by ptolemy18

Zenke attempts to pass this off as an "advantage", but anyone I've known who ever wanted to play a wizard or cleric, adored the complexity and bookkeeping aspect. That's the whole point of playing one, or was.

I've played a few wizards and clerics. The point of playing a wizard, for me, was to be heavy artillery. I didn't want to carefully track my spell list, spell choices, spell components, and what have you. I just wanted to blast rooms full of critters into oblivion, and was occasionally willing to put up with the necessary bookkeeping to be able to do it. I played clerics more often, partly because I really like being a healer and partly because they have a little less bookkeeping.

4th edition makes both of these classes much more playable for me.

[baberg]

I'm curious as to why it seems that you associate complexity with fun. You say that complexity is what made Clerics and Wizards fun. You think having characters with hundreds of possible builds (only a handful of which are useful) is fun. And you seem to honestly think that having to explain everything with a set of rules instead of "hand waving" is fun.

I'm curious as to why that is because I think you'll find that, for a lot of people, "complex" is a more approximate substitute for "frustrating" than it is for "fun".

[Silverblade The Ench]

I love simulation...3rd ed has awesome simulation of the D&D game world.
It SUCKED though to DM. it was overly complex. Bets to leave that amount of dice orlling to computer, not me!

I love RPing creatures/NPCs. Much of my games revolve around "who or what dunnits", diplomacy and other social skills, and other such non-combat stuff. But combat is fast, furious and brutal (I love Dark Sun).

I do wish 4th ed had far more background fluff on monsters, and I'm not happy with all the changes to background for osme of them and the game mythology (like driders are now admired drow rather than pond slime outcasts?!)

On the whole I think 4th ed is a very good thing and makes me want ot play as DM again...just trying to get my pals to enjoy it though, without them there's no point

I love wizards, my fave class, hence nom de plume (Silverblade the Enchanter), but I hated how fighters were just.."roll attack dice"...meh. I always described how fighting went on as I DMed, gory Conan style, but, it wasn't right that fighters etc were just rolling combat dice and not doing fun things.

Wizards now have to think tactically, rather than rely on "spell #101" to get out of trouble, that's good, it stops laziness

Tactical thinking = players need to co-operate and tell grand standing soloist-power-gamers to get with the program, or get ganked, hehe!

Gawd, I loved 1st ed...*hugs his Fiend Folio*, but htis is getting more like the old days: fun and fast.

I've always used minis, except very very early and when circumstances prevented it.
Used "Heroquest" game minis, way back

I think 4th ed needs a LOT more stuff, to let us adapt to our own campaign worlds, that is, powers, feats, multiclassing and paths etc.
For example, to resemble Prestige Classes.

[Kishin]

Originally Posted by ptolemy18

and eliminating a lot of the more evocative and weird and "indefinable" powers in previous editions, which generally belonged to the spell lists of the wizard and cleric characters

Most of these spells = the ones that broke the game.

Also, I really have to wonder how many people who have been complaining about Clerics and Wizards being scaled back ever saw how ridiculous they could get at later levels in 3E. Non super-optimized non-casters might as well just leave the party around 11th level if there's a halfway decent cleric or wizard afoot.

Your review comes off as very biased, but what review doesn't? You have the foresight to admit this though, and I give you many points for being genuine in your presentation. It seems like 4E isn't really going to be your thing, if you're looking for a serious simulationist RPG.

And now I'll snip my rant about how much the existence of the G/S/N framework frustrates me.

[Old Gumphrey]

Originally Posted by Kishin

Most of these spells = the ones that broke the game.

Also, I really have to wonder how many people who have been complaining about Clerics and Wizards being scaled back ever saw how ridiculous they could get at later levels in 3E. Non super-optimized non-casters might as well just leave the party around 11th level if there's a halfway decent cleric or wizard afoot.

This. You lament that casters are "nerfed" now. Well, when you nerf a nuclear missile, it becomes a regular missile. All characters are now missiles. It's not 4 or 5 distinct levels of ballistic weapons trying to compete.

I don't believe that a magic user has a right to be more powerful from a gameplay perspective than a mundane character just because he can manipulate magic.

But if you think about it, the wizard is still much more powerful than the fighter:

Wizard - can slay gads of creatures in an instant with a wave of fire that comes from nowhere, because he SAID SO. Can fly through the air, turn invisible, and call meteors from heaven.

Fighter - can simply sprint in your direction and smack the hell out of you with a heavy piece of metal.

The difference now is that at high levels, the fighter is no longer USELESS, and is also just as much fun to play as the wizard. They are designed to have the same general power level in a combat situation.

I feel that a lot of people who are complaining about this are probably just upset because they can no longer dominate the spotlight in a party.

[Raith5]

Originally Posted by ptolemy18

Personally, I think the fighting-type characters' new powers are AWESOME. I think the pushing, pulling & sliding figures around the miniatures mat is AWESOME. The second wind ability is AWESOME. But the total nerfing of magical abilities is completely frustrating. Reading the Monster Manual was also a frustrating experience.

I agree with this mostly but the solutions are relatively easy. Maybe give the Wizard (and maybe other spell casters) an extra utility power at a certain level. Or maybe give the cleric the faith specific feat as a class feature ( I agree that clerics have been largely stripped of their faith specific flavour). You can always give certain monsters rituals.

[Sylrae]

I like some of the aspects of 4e as well, but I largely agree with you. I noticed that for the most part, nobody "attacks" anymore.

I hate the new wizards/clerics.

Clerics: when I play a cleric I don't play a healer. I play clerics for life manipulating spells that a wizard doesn't get, they're much better at necromancy, they get some sweet planar spells, and if you took the right domains in 3e they made an awesome buffing melee class. If someone asks me to heal them when I play a cleric, I usually laugh at them. (I often don't even take healing spells). Even when I play good clerics, I don't emphasize the healing, I emphasize everything else. And Attacks that heal your party are the most idiotic part of the new clerics.

Wizards: the new spells lack diversity. as a wizard, I don't expect to have all the spells at my fingertips at once, but as I gain levels I expect to have a plethora of spells to choose from to learn. like at least 25-30 per level. as I just said though, I'm ok with having more limited access to spells. But Im not ok with there being so many less spells to choose from.

As for monsters, I'm not too fond of the lack of non-combat info on monsters. I also dislike the rarity of player stats for monsters.

And I hate the whole grid/minis thing. I tried it and the game devolved into a boardgame right before my eyes. The players stopped thinking outside the box, stopped being creative. It went from jumping over monsters and swinging on chandaliers descriptions of how and where they were attacking the enemy to "I move 4 squares and attack the enemy". It's the same reason I haven't dropped called shots. They make the players more creative which in turn makes the stories more interesting.

[Bigwilly]

Originally Posted by Old Gumphrey

The difference now is that at high levels, the fighter is no longer USELESS, and is also just as much fun to play as the wizard. They are designed to have the same general power level in a combat situation.

In our high level 3.5e campaign (around 16th level), with just a couple of spells our cleric can easily become a better fighter than my fighter. He is also our healer and primary AOE damage dealer. And while I can deal about 40 pts of damage to a single target per round, he can do the same to all targets. Sure, he will eventually run out of spells, but usually we run out of things to hit first. So I for one am certainly looking forward to playing high level melee classes in 4e.

[ptolemy18]

Originally Posted by Old Gumphrey

I feel that a lot of people who are complaining about this are probably just upset because they can no longer dominate the spotlight in a party.

Personally, if I had to balance everything out in terms of Absolute Balance, I'd prefered the idea of playing in a combat world where High-Level Power automatically equals Spells, and that's just how it is. You can *start out* as a low-level fighter, rogue, etc., who doesn't know magic, but when you get up to 15th+ level, those classes (or their Paragon Paths, etc.) automatically become more "magical" and start taking on spell-like functions. Basically, don't nerf the wizards -- give EVERYONE some magic as levels progress.

(Of course, this would remove the very appeal of playing those non-magic-using classes, to a lot of people... but anyway... that'd be *my* solution. I like spells. ~_~ )

Anyway, my chief complaint about the 4e PHB, apart from my personal desire to dominate the gaming table with some ret*rded spell/Metamagic Feat combination ( ), is that it just doesn't offer as many options for varied character builds as in the 3e PHB. In this way, it's really more of a game for newbies, as opposed to experienced character-crafters, number-crunchers, "explorers", power-gamers, whatever you want to call them (us). It's much easier to make an average character, and much harder to make a notably "good" character or a "bad" character via good or bad choices.

Now, this in itself isn't a bad thing... and it's great to be a dragonborn or a tiefling or an eladrin, but..... but c'mon, the variety of characters you can make in 4e is really very limited, particularly spellcasting characters. It's like someone else pointed out in another thread, about just how few feats were really appropriate for her Dwarven Cleric. In 3e you could play a zillion different types of clerics, wizards, or sorcerers just using the basic PHB, all drawing from different combinations of the same spell list. If I wanted to create a "plant-themed" sorcerer I *could* do it, just using things like Entangle and Plant Growth and Summon Weird Plant Monsters. ~_~ Or if I wanted to create this, or that... basically the options were all there. The spell list in 3e was the Grand Guideline For What Level Any Effect Would Be, and How It Would Work.

And I personally never felt it was broken. (But then again, I also welcomed the added randomness of high levels -- sure, keep flinging save-or-dies at one another! High levels equal unpredictability!)

Here's two related things I dislike:

(1) your class is now Your Class. Yes, I know there's a pseudo-multiclassing system in 4e, but I much preferred the multiclassing & prestige class system in 3e. It was much more diverse and customizable. Now, you're really locked in for life. Again, simple and understandable, but less versatile.
(2) in keeping with this, there are much fewer "cross-class" abilities which are accessible to everyone. It used to be that both Feats *and* Spells could be taken by every class if you had the right requirements. Now apparently Spells are too complicated to exist as a type of thing in their own right, and instead, every class has its own set of feats, even redundant ones, such as all the multiple level 29 powers that cause 7(W) damage. :/

Y'know how I would have done it? Three separate lists of "powers." Arcane, Martial and Divine. Instead of listing each class's powers right next to the class. The only reason not to do it this way is to make it sliiiiightly simpler to keep track of, so they're right there next to your class and you don't have to read through them in alphabetical order from a big list like the spells in 3e. Furthermore, this way you don't necessarily notice if some classes have a smaller number of stronger powers, or a larger number of weaker powers. Which I think is a legitimate design decision.

Essentially, as someone who virtually always plays spellcasting characters (I did play one 3e rogue, and after he died on his third session, I must admit I understand the appeal of 4e rogues :/ ), and who prefers "internally consistent" worlds, I agree that 4e is probably not my game.

I do want to play it at least once or twice to see what it's like to shift all those minis around and push them into lava pits. After I house-rule EVERY SINGLE 3E SPELL back into the game... sheesh, what a pain...

[Tuft]

Originally Posted by Sylrae

Wizards: the new spells lack diversity. as a wizard, I don't expect to have all the spells at my fingertips at once, but as I gain levels I expect to have a plethora of spells to choose from to learn. like at least 25-30 per level. as I just said though, I'm ok with having more limited access to spells. But Im not ok with there being so many less spells to choose from.

What I really, really badly miss, down into depression, is "flavour" or "feelgood" magic. I don't care that much about counting HP in combat, but there were some situations that occured out of combat that I'm sorely going to long for. Like shapeshifting into a dolphin so that you could ride the bow wave of your ship, or charming an Ogre Mage to tell the ancient history of his people, or shrinking a rust monster so you could smuggle it into the city to end a brewing vendetta...

[ptolemy18]

Originally Posted by Tuft

What I really, really badly miss, down into depression, is "flavour" or "feelgood" magic. I don't care that much about counting HP in combat, but there were some situations that occured out of combat that I'm sorely going to long for. Like shapeshifting into a dolphin so that you could ride the bow wave of your ship, or charming an Ogre Mage to tell the ancient history of his people, or shrinking a rust monster so you could smuggle it into the city to end a brewing vendetta...

Exactly! In the designers' insane zeal to make sure that spells never duplicated the effects of *anything* (feats, skills, etc.) they got rid of a lot of great effects. It really bugs me.

I also don't like how ritualized the whole "encounter' thing is in 4e. (i.e., if you cast a saving throw spell on some hapless NPC in a non-combat situation, does it *really* have only a 50% chance of effecting them longer than 6 seconds? Is this another "hand-waving" situation?) But hey, that's just me. I prefer feet to squares too. ~_~

[BWS]

Originally Posted by ptolemy18

You can *start out* as a low-level fighter, rogue, etc., who doesn't know magic, but when you get up to 15th+ level, those classes (or their Paragon Paths, etc.) automatically become more "magical" and start taking on spell-like functions. Basically, don't nerf the wizards -- give EVERYONE some magic as levels progress.

High-level exploits effectively are magical.