The 4E Players Handbook: good...bad...ugly..

[Greg K]

The Good:
- Removing most of the non-biological aspects of race and making them feats.
- Unified Save Progression
- multiclassing: I actually like that multiclassing is more like dabbling. I dislike how in 3e you can just multiclass and grab a whole bunch of abilities without long periods of downtime and a trainer.
- no more XP costs for various things


The Bad:
- Action Points, Healing Surge (and see ugly +1/2 character level bonus): I like having action points and a way to recover hit points without magic so their inclusion is good. However, I don't like the mechanics which I consider ugly and prefer the approach of Mutants and Masterminds Hero Points which allows extra actions, healing surges, rerolls with a bonus and more.

- Rituals: I prefer UA Incantations.
- Magic: The magic system. I'm not a fan of Vancian, but I do not consider the new rules any better. Per encounter just introduces its own share of "wtf?"

The Ugly
- +1/2 character level bonus (except in the case of the unified saving throw).
- no Star Wars condition track
- negative hit points expanded (I wish they had done away with it)
- hit point recovery
- per encounter abilities
- many of the cleric, paladin and warlock abilties
- the skill system
- Milestones
- How Daily Items work
- Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies (note: I generally wasn't a fan of most 3e PrCs which I felt should have been their own class variants or handled as a new base class, but at least my character could enter them much sooner).
- I still have no interest in playing DND above 10th level or so
- anything else that I forgot to mention.

 

[Gort]

Am I the only one who kinda hates a lot of the art in the PHB? A lot of it looks very "generated" - like they made the scene in Poser and then sort of drew over it. I think the image that gets to me the most is the one in the paragon feats section of the elf chick running away from a red dragon. The red dragon looks like a miniature someone zoomed in on, the elf looks like she came straight from a bad 3D render, and neither of them look like they're interacting with the other AT ALL. It's pretty embarassingly bad, but it's not a dealbreaker.

Of course, if you want TRULY atrocious art, all you have to look at is the Shadowrun 4e books. Dear god.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

S&B, this is not bad. This is D&D.

Not to speak ill of the dead and all, but while Gygax had an interesting and erudite style, I don't think he could write decent rules. See his post-TSR games for more examples.

My comments on the 4e PHB:

Good: an excellent attempt to produce a coherent system out of the mess that D&D bequeathed to them. I give very strong credit to the authors for being willing to actually change rules. Vastly more readable than the dull textbook of 3rd edition.

Bad: still has a bit too much adherence to tradition for my tastes. For a minor example: Sleep is still a first level spell for no good reason but "That's the way it always been." Halflings still there for token tolkienism, still too many elves.

Ugly: I think they tried to shoehorn too much into one book, and it shows. I think they may have been better off with just 4 or 5 classes, Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue and perhaps Ranger. The extra space would be given over to more build options and powers for the remaining classes, more magic items, more feats, more rituals.