Jack Daniel
Legend
When I think back to 2008 and ask myself why 4th edition didn't "do it" for me, the answer that usually springs to mind centers on the occasion of the 4e PHB release. The very day it came out, I drove down to the local Borders bookstore, dashed over to the sci-fi and role-playing section, pulled the book off the shelf, and started to read.
The first thing that struck me as "off" was the layout. The presentation. All that clean white-space, but without the curious sans-serif font and understated borders that marked the revised (i.e. black-cover) 2nd edition manuals that I was most fond of. Lots of tables, pages and pages of "powers" that made far less sense to me when I tried to read them than spells ever did. After a decade of 3rd edition and its faux-tome look, this textbook/magazine look was very different. It was odd, but it wasn't what kept me from buying the book.
The character sheet was no friendlier to look at than 3rd edition's: it was another blasted tax-form, typical for d20 games, but it made me very happy that I had already been playing Labyrinth Lord instead for almost a year by that point. But that wasn't the reason either.
There were fluff changes that really grated, especially among the races: halflings were re-written yet again, to make them even less hobbity than before; and elves were made even more mortal, to make them even less elfy than before. (Seriously, why does the elf lifespan keep decreasing by four or five centuries with each edition? At this rate, in 5e, elves will have a lifespan of minus 100 years!) Tieflings, it was suddenly decided, were something wholly different than before. But that sort of thing is easily overcome, since the fluff in the books only lasts until the DM changes it for the sake of his own campaign setting. So that couldn't be it either.
Really, what struck me (and I'm only realizing this now, so please bear with me if other people have already made this observation) is that the 4th edition PHB1 seemed woefully incomplete as a player's handbook. No monks, barbarians, assassins, druids, bards, gnomes, half-orcs... you can get away with a basic or starter D&D game absent those things, but not the freaking Player's Handbook. And yes, I was aware even then that these things were promised shortly to follow in future PHBs, and that "everything was core in 4e". But here's the thing: that shouldn't ever have to be the case. It can't be. The fact will always remain, the Player's Handbook is a core rulebook that you need to play the game; the PHB2 is a splat that you really don't, no matter how the marketeers label the cover. It's the nature of the beast that the first player's handbook will have lots of essential rules in it, and any future add-ons simply won't.
So for the first PHB to excise so many traditional D&Disms -- not mechanics mind you, just character options that everybody rightfully expects to have access to on day one -- and to fill that space instead with oddities like the warlord and warlock, the tiefling and the dragonborn, well... to a forward-thinking D&D futurist of some sort, that might have been a sign of boldness and innovation, a sign that WotC was trying to be different and bring some young blood into the hobby. But to a traditionalist like myself, someone who was drawn to the game not because it resembled contemporary fantasy fiction, but because its fantasy felt older and far more resonant than, say, Harry Potter? I wouldn't call it a slap in the face, but it definitely read to me like a stark message that I was being left behind.
4th edition was the first time that, even with all three core books in hand, you couldn't really "do" AD&D with it. It was missing too many essential races and classes. It had replaced them with other things that were decidedly not essential to the D&D experience. I remain baffled as to why that decision was made on WotC's part, and I now recognize it as the main reason I could never take up 4th edition -- I would've been required to cart around far too many books.
So, if there is a lesson that 5th edition needs to learn, it is this: the first Player's Handbook had better be bloody-well inclusive. You can keep dragonborn and warforged in there -- they have plenty of fantasy pedigree, as far as I'm concerned, such that it's worth adding them to the lineup. You can have tieflings too, as long as aasimar are included alongside them (some of us think that aasimar are cooler than tieflings). Hell, you can even add shardminds and devas and wilden, whatever the crap those things are -- just so long as you don't replace anything else that should also be there -- elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, half-orcs, maybe even half-ogres. If these classic races aren't adequately represented in 5th edition's PHB1 (and it should go without saying that the same goes for certain classes, like, say, monk and bard and assassin), it will be a troublesome sign. It will be a sign that 5e is, like its predecessor, incomplete without more than its three core rulebooks. There will be nerdrage. There will be howls of "cash-grab" and "you're doin' it wrong". There will be poor sales figures that fiscal quarter.
So far, I really like what I've heard about 5e. I like the concept of backgrounds and themes. I have high hopes for flatter math and balanced wizards. I so dearly love the new take on hit dice that it might see daylight the next time I play 2nd edition. Just... WotC, if you see this, if you care at all about getting D&D right for the first time since it's been in your custody, make very sure that gnome illusionists and half-orc assassins and human monks are playable on day one. It's one thing to pay lip-service to D&D's "essentials"; it's quite another to live up to the claim.
The first thing that struck me as "off" was the layout. The presentation. All that clean white-space, but without the curious sans-serif font and understated borders that marked the revised (i.e. black-cover) 2nd edition manuals that I was most fond of. Lots of tables, pages and pages of "powers" that made far less sense to me when I tried to read them than spells ever did. After a decade of 3rd edition and its faux-tome look, this textbook/magazine look was very different. It was odd, but it wasn't what kept me from buying the book.
The character sheet was no friendlier to look at than 3rd edition's: it was another blasted tax-form, typical for d20 games, but it made me very happy that I had already been playing Labyrinth Lord instead for almost a year by that point. But that wasn't the reason either.
There were fluff changes that really grated, especially among the races: halflings were re-written yet again, to make them even less hobbity than before; and elves were made even more mortal, to make them even less elfy than before. (Seriously, why does the elf lifespan keep decreasing by four or five centuries with each edition? At this rate, in 5e, elves will have a lifespan of minus 100 years!) Tieflings, it was suddenly decided, were something wholly different than before. But that sort of thing is easily overcome, since the fluff in the books only lasts until the DM changes it for the sake of his own campaign setting. So that couldn't be it either.
Really, what struck me (and I'm only realizing this now, so please bear with me if other people have already made this observation) is that the 4th edition PHB1 seemed woefully incomplete as a player's handbook. No monks, barbarians, assassins, druids, bards, gnomes, half-orcs... you can get away with a basic or starter D&D game absent those things, but not the freaking Player's Handbook. And yes, I was aware even then that these things were promised shortly to follow in future PHBs, and that "everything was core in 4e". But here's the thing: that shouldn't ever have to be the case. It can't be. The fact will always remain, the Player's Handbook is a core rulebook that you need to play the game; the PHB2 is a splat that you really don't, no matter how the marketeers label the cover. It's the nature of the beast that the first player's handbook will have lots of essential rules in it, and any future add-ons simply won't.
So for the first PHB to excise so many traditional D&Disms -- not mechanics mind you, just character options that everybody rightfully expects to have access to on day one -- and to fill that space instead with oddities like the warlord and warlock, the tiefling and the dragonborn, well... to a forward-thinking D&D futurist of some sort, that might have been a sign of boldness and innovation, a sign that WotC was trying to be different and bring some young blood into the hobby. But to a traditionalist like myself, someone who was drawn to the game not because it resembled contemporary fantasy fiction, but because its fantasy felt older and far more resonant than, say, Harry Potter? I wouldn't call it a slap in the face, but it definitely read to me like a stark message that I was being left behind.
4th edition was the first time that, even with all three core books in hand, you couldn't really "do" AD&D with it. It was missing too many essential races and classes. It had replaced them with other things that were decidedly not essential to the D&D experience. I remain baffled as to why that decision was made on WotC's part, and I now recognize it as the main reason I could never take up 4th edition -- I would've been required to cart around far too many books.
So, if there is a lesson that 5th edition needs to learn, it is this: the first Player's Handbook had better be bloody-well inclusive. You can keep dragonborn and warforged in there -- they have plenty of fantasy pedigree, as far as I'm concerned, such that it's worth adding them to the lineup. You can have tieflings too, as long as aasimar are included alongside them (some of us think that aasimar are cooler than tieflings). Hell, you can even add shardminds and devas and wilden, whatever the crap those things are -- just so long as you don't replace anything else that should also be there -- elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, half-orcs, maybe even half-ogres. If these classic races aren't adequately represented in 5th edition's PHB1 (and it should go without saying that the same goes for certain classes, like, say, monk and bard and assassin), it will be a troublesome sign. It will be a sign that 5e is, like its predecessor, incomplete without more than its three core rulebooks. There will be nerdrage. There will be howls of "cash-grab" and "you're doin' it wrong". There will be poor sales figures that fiscal quarter.
So far, I really like what I've heard about 5e. I like the concept of backgrounds and themes. I have high hopes for flatter math and balanced wizards. I so dearly love the new take on hit dice that it might see daylight the next time I play 2nd edition. Just... WotC, if you see this, if you care at all about getting D&D right for the first time since it's been in your custody, make very sure that gnome illusionists and half-orc assassins and human monks are playable on day one. It's one thing to pay lip-service to D&D's "essentials"; it's quite another to live up to the claim.
