Review of 4E on Aint It Cool News

[kitoy]

The review is here. They also announce a new AICN Tabletop section in the article. I'm reading it now.

 

[Mort_Q]

The Verdict.

4E rocks.

Much of the negative was about sacred cows.

 

[Henry]

He also answered a question that some people had about monster creation rules and formulas - namely, they're present in force!

Good review. I liked the follow-up, and now I even have an actual reason to read AICN.

 

[Kordeth]

I believe this review is the first official word that anyone can learn and use rituals, isn't it? It was pretty strongly suggested, but Massawyrm flat-out states it.

 

[Blackeagle]

He also answered a question that some people had about monster creation rules and formulas - namely, they're present in force!

Great to get confirmation on having the monster creation rules, but I was kind of bummed by this:

The only thing missing from playtest that I can honestly complain about is the trap/hazard creation rules. While the monster stat rules survived, the similar trap rules did not. They were pretty swell, so I hope we see them again shortly in one of the upcoming books or as part of the digital initiative.

I'm hoping we won't have to wait until DMG2 to see the trap creation rules.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yeah, the trap/hazard concept seems like a great one, so it's hard to hear that the rules for that got cut.

 

[Kordeth]

Yeah, the trap/hazard concept seems like a great one, so it's hard to hear that the rules for that got cut.

That does suck, but given the way traps are built I don't expect it to be too hard to look at the sample traps and the monster creation rules to figure out a pretty good estimation of the numbers a trap should have.

 

[Stalker0]

Yeah, the trap/hazard concept seems like a great one, so it's hard to hear that the rules for that got cut.

Yep. But hey, in a perfect world we would get phb I-IV packed into one massive super volume all at the beginning!! You can only pack so much info into a book people will use, so certain things have to get shelved to the next one.

 

[small pumpkin man]

I'm hoping we won't have to wait until DMG2 to see the trap creation rules.

I was also disapointed. As well as by the whole "there's a bunch of recycled art", impying the vampire is not alone in it's use of 3.x art.

 

[kitoy]

The brief glimpse of ritual magic we got here really intrigues me. It looks like, those who want a low-magic game can totally cut divine and arcane power sources and use ritual magic as the "only" magic in their game.

Also, was I the only one to think, "Vlad Taltos" re: the ritual magic rules?