First review of the new Red Box

[Agamon]

I agree. This is a great release for attracting both new and younger players. The box art is, of course, lost on that demographic, but it's nice nod to nostalgic older players/collectors.

I completely agree with the TRS guys, the PC creation reads like starting out in a video game plays, with a tutorial, which is a great idea.

The covers do look pretty flimsy, don't they? I suppose the cheap paper makes the product more affordable, and the idea is that you learn the game with this and move on to the Rules Compendium, if not "Advanced" 4e , so I suppose it doesn't get a whole lot of use.

Good idea, WotC, I'm interested in seeing what the rest of Essentials line looks like (even if I have no plans on picking it up myself).

 

[IronWolf]

For those who say it looks flimsy compared to the old classic boxed sets, I have say that those are some serious Coke bottle nostalgia glasses you are wearing. I still have the original Red (Basic Rules) and Blue (Expert Rules) box out in my garage and this is ten times those old sets, both in quality in and in all the stuff you get. Power sheet cards, monster tokens, battlemat, fairly decent quality dice etc.

I know when I watched the video one of my early thoughts was that the book covers looked flimsy. I don't think its nostalgia influencing that, since I can go the basement and grab my Moldvay stuff and still see it in reasonably condition given that it saw lots of play when I was a kid, i.e. when I was a little harder on books than I am now.

You definitely get some other cool stuff in this box set, not denying that. And I really do want to see this set succeed and will likely get a copy for myself and IronPup. But if this is geared for kids, the books need to have a little bit of durability to them. It looks more like the pamphlets that came with the 3.5 basic set which didn't wear well.

 

[MerricB]

I know when I watched the video one of my early thoughts was that the book covers looked flimsy. I don't think its nostalgia influencing that, since I can go the basement and grab my Moldvay stuff and still see it in reasonably condition given that it saw lots of play when I was a kid, i.e. when I was a little harder on books than I am now.

You definitely get some other cool stuff in this box set, not denying that. And I really do want to see this set succeed and will likely get a copy for myself and IronPup. But if this is geared for kids, the books need to have a little bit of durability to them. It looks more like the pamphlets that came with the 3.5 basic set which didn't wear well.

The Moldvay covers weren't particularly flimsy.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[IronWolf]

The Moldvay covers weren't particularly flimsy.

I agree. Mine held up to a lot of abuse and a lot of days in a backpack going to and from school.

 

[JoeGKushner]

well, 4e by default assumes point buy. Moreover, since the stats work differently from edition to edition, why should stat generation be the same?

get!off!my!lawn!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I understand that the +7 is not only from the stats, but more than half of it is. That's my disconnect. I come from a time when a Dex 14 thief was ok and got no bonus to attack. Now it's not, and does nothing but force players to build their characters to meet the new standard. That's what I see as stat/math inflation. I hated it in 3e and hate it in 4e. To me it doesn't add anything to the game when every friggin thief is going to have a +3 or +4 bonus from stats. I come from a different time obviously.

Can we stop this crap of 3e with stat inflation? Unearthed Arcana and rolling 9 dice for your primary score? Not 'SUPER' old school but easily 1st ed.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

In addition to opening the box and showing the contents (dice, dungeon map, two booklets, a sheet of tokens, character sheets), they start reading the "Read Me First!" book (yes, that's on the cover).

The Read Me First opens with a sort of "Choose Your Own Adventure" chapter. You are on a cart with a merchant when goblins attack. By choosing what you'd like to do, you make the choices that create your first character.

"Pick up a weapon and leap down to fight the goblins?" = Fighter
"Cast a spell at the goblins" = Wizard
"Pick up a dagger and use the cart for cover as you try to sneak around the goblins and pick them off" = Rogue
"Tend to the merchant's wounds, perhaps saying a prayer to the gods" = Cleric

So the guy chooses Rogue, and is directed to the section that explains the Rogue and tells that, if the character is a human, elf or halfling, his Dex is 18, if it's dwarf or eladrin, it's 16. This also tells what the modifier is for the Dex, the attack bonus for the dagger, and tells the player to roll a d20 and add the total modifier (+7 or +6, depending on race).

This is great for beginners because you *are already playing*, you don't have to decide what to make and learn to build a character first.

I really liked that one of the options was "Hide in the wagon", or words to that effect. They looked up what would happen if they did that and got a nicely worded lecture on being a hero!

 

[WheresMyD20]

Interesting. Some observations:

1. These guys are great representatives of gamers who think D&D BECM is hard core old school.

2. Their reactions to the concept of a Basic Set is quite funny, IMO, for those who have previously experienced the 70's and the 80's iterations of the game.

They stated explicitly in the review that none of the three had ever played D&D prior to 3.5e. They are definitely not "old-school" players.

 

[MerricB]

Can we stop this crap of 3e with stat inflation? Unearthed Arcana and rolling 9 dice for your primary score? Not 'SUPER' old school but easily 1st ed.

Heck, 1E just out of the gate was stat inflation. OD&D was 3d6 in order. AD&D didn't even *allow* that version of generation - instead it gave quite a number of methods, including, my favourite, roll 6 times on 3d6 for each stat and take the highest result.

Cheers!

 

[Jasperak]

I thought you preferred random stat generation? In random stat generation, doesn't a single roll have the possibility of producing a great advantage to a character? Even without exceptional strength, an 18 is a big advantage. So is an 18 Con, an 18 Dex, etc.

I prefer random ability generation. My issue with AD&D's exceptional strength is that it allowed a character to start the game with a +3 to hit and +6 to damage, but only if you had two exceptional rolls. The fact that I have seen more 18/00s than any other number combined strains the laws of probabilities, but we all know why it happened.

This is only an issue if you equate one level in an earlier edition to one level in a later one. Levels are very abstract; maybe you're looking at it from the wrong direction. Maybe you should start with the ability modifiers, see how many levels of advancement they represent, and calculate the "equivalent" level in the other edition. If you follow me.

Basically: why assume that one level means exactly the same thing in 4E as it does in AD&D (for example)? You already know that the stats don't mean quite the same thing (IIRC, 18 was the absolute max in some earlier editions, whereas now 20 is fairly common).

In OD&D & BD&D, an 18 in Strength (No Bonus) for a Fighting-man equals a 10% bonus to experience.

In B/X-BECM, an 18 in Strength (+3 Bonus) for a Fighter equals a 10% bonus to experience, +3 bonus to hit = levels difficult to calculate because of the chart but looks like between 4-8 levels/36. Both systems use a chart that generally increases by two every four levels, so a 1st-level fighter and a 3rd-level fighter have the same base THAC0 of 19, a 4th-level fighter and a 6th-level fighter have a THAC0 of 17. (+2/ 4 levels). This equates to about a 20-30% jump in combat ability, if the combat charts continue progressing all the way to 36. I don't think they do, so that jump in ability would probably be even greater.

In AD&D2e, an 18/00 in Strength (+3/+6 Bonus) for a Fighter equals a 10% bonus to experience, a +3 bonus to hit = 3 levels/20 (+1 / 1 level). This equates to a 15% jump in combat ability.

In 3e, an 18 in Strength (+4 Bonus) for a Fighter equals a +4 bonus to hit = 4 levels/20 (+1 / 1 level). This equates into a 20% jump in combat ability

In 4e, an 18 in Strength (+4 Bonus) for a Fighter equals a +4 bonus to hit = 8 levels/30 (+1 / 2 levels). This equates to a 27% jump in combat ability.

4e matches very closely with B/X-BECM mathematically, but whereas in B/X-BECM there is about a 1/200 chance of getting an 18, in 4e an 18 is almost a given. That to me is stat inflation.

Granted, like I mentioned before about the 18/00 issue, most fighters had above average scores, but neither B/X nor BECM expected a 4th-level fighter to have the fighting ability of a 8th-12th level fighter with regards to hit probabilities. What does 4e expect a Fighter to have for Strength?

ACs didn't scale very much with regards to the character's levels. As an example, how many monsters in B/X-BECM had ACs of -10? How many monsters in 4e have ACs of 30+. A quick look at the first page in the MM and I find that three of the four Aboleths (levels 16, 17, 18) have ACs at or above 30.

In my experience, fighters hit all the time, but others like the Cleric hit ok, and the Thief hit very well with a bow/x-bow and an equivalent Dexterity but not as well as the fighter. And in general the higher the level of the fighter, the more likely he would be to hit. In 4e, if I am not mistaken, in a level-equivalent encounter the fighter will always have something like a 45%-65% chance to hit.

Do you play much 4E? I played a dwarf fighter with a 14 Strength who was quite effective, because his Con and Wis were correspondingly high. Even though all his attacks relied on Strength to hit, he still dealt good damage, and was impossible to take down.

No, I gave it a try for about three months. There were alot of things that I liked about it, and then other things that kept me from making it my go-to fantasy RPG.

In essence, your 4e fighter took a 5% penalty to hit/damage (or a 2 level penalty) going from a 16 to a 14, to be cool in other ways. But would you drop his strength to 10? Would you take a 6-level penalty as a fighter? Would you be able to take a 15% penalty to hit for your character concept? Would the design of 4e penalize your character too much?

I have written far more than I would have ever expected. I'm not even sure that I answered your questions. I will look again tomorrow and clarify.