So the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons came out not too long ago. It was heralded as an exciting new edition that gets rid of a lot of the complications that arose within 3E and 3.5E. Yesterday, I received my copy of the Player's Handbook, and have had a chance to skim through it to paint myself a picture of how the new edition might be like.
I have to say that I'm not impressed. Before you either stop reading and vow never to touch D&D again (or smash me because you disagree), let me elaborate. When I first looked through the pages, and (true to my last post) spent a long time looking over the character sheet, I was really excited. I like how they had balanced out the base system of the rules - no more dump stats, the mechanics and mathematics got evened out and unified, and the game seemed to have become much tighter, much more streamlined. Then I actually started to read it, and while I'm not finished (and probably won't be until I've read the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual as well), I have already found both things that I like and things that I dislike.
The first thing they struck me is that they have toppled over a lot of the stuff that has been built up over the last three editions. Among the new things is stuff like elves being fey creatures, gnomes no longer being player races (I know right now that one friend of mine will curse D&D for this), and taking away the lists of hundreds of spells that I loved to collect. The "core" has changed, tieflings, along with two new races, are now fully integrated, they took away five of the "core" classes (among those the bard and the druid, which were around since 2nd Edition), and generally revamped a lot of stuff, both for the better and for worse.
What I can say right now is that after looking at the class descriptions (which are roughly 14-15 pages for each class) is that while they have been balanced out, they are really just the same structure with different numbers and abilities put in. A lot of the flavor seems to be lost, even though each class has 10 pages of special powers no other class has. The classes have taken on much more defined roles, much like in MMORPGs. The fighter is now there to tank and taunt monsters, the cleric can buff and heal like crazy, and so on. But 95% of these specialties are combat-oriented. That, along with the shortened, binary skill list might make playing outside of combat pretty weird.
In order to keep this short and make it a first impression instead of a full analysis, I'll stop here. All I'll say is that while the game has become simpler on the rules side, for some reason, the flavor side seems to have died as well. To be frank, D&D has always been a pioneer, a game that has brought up new ideas on a big scale and out onto the market. And maybe I'm just too comfortable with 3.5E that I'm still subconsciously resisting 4E. People don't like change. I'll definitely look into it more, and come back again with a more thorough analysis.
Qi
I have to say that I'm not impressed. Before you either stop reading and vow never to touch D&D again (or smash me because you disagree), let me elaborate. When I first looked through the pages, and (true to my last post) spent a long time looking over the character sheet, I was really excited. I like how they had balanced out the base system of the rules - no more dump stats, the mechanics and mathematics got evened out and unified, and the game seemed to have become much tighter, much more streamlined. Then I actually started to read it, and while I'm not finished (and probably won't be until I've read the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual as well), I have already found both things that I like and things that I dislike.
The first thing they struck me is that they have toppled over a lot of the stuff that has been built up over the last three editions. Among the new things is stuff like elves being fey creatures, gnomes no longer being player races (I know right now that one friend of mine will curse D&D for this), and taking away the lists of hundreds of spells that I loved to collect. The "core" has changed, tieflings, along with two new races, are now fully integrated, they took away five of the "core" classes (among those the bard and the druid, which were around since 2nd Edition), and generally revamped a lot of stuff, both for the better and for worse.
What I can say right now is that after looking at the class descriptions (which are roughly 14-15 pages for each class) is that while they have been balanced out, they are really just the same structure with different numbers and abilities put in. A lot of the flavor seems to be lost, even though each class has 10 pages of special powers no other class has. The classes have taken on much more defined roles, much like in MMORPGs. The fighter is now there to tank and taunt monsters, the cleric can buff and heal like crazy, and so on. But 95% of these specialties are combat-oriented. That, along with the shortened, binary skill list might make playing outside of combat pretty weird.
In order to keep this short and make it a first impression instead of a full analysis, I'll stop here. All I'll say is that while the game has become simpler on the rules side, for some reason, the flavor side seems to have died as well. To be frank, D&D has always been a pioneer, a game that has brought up new ideas on a big scale and out onto the market. And maybe I'm just too comfortable with 3.5E that I'm still subconsciously resisting 4E. People don't like change. I'll definitely look into it more, and come back again with a more thorough analysis.
Qi
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