The Fourth Edition

RPGC Community Realm of the Dragons Forum
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As most of you know, I’m O-o-o-l-d. :stuck_out_tongue: Enough to have played basic D&D!! Though I did play up to 2nd Edition, and browsed some 3rd ed. books. Then my local bookstore closed and by the time a Borders opened in its place, I had long stopped roleplaying (well, on tabletops. :wink: )

But the other day I found myself with some free time so I went to Borders and spent a few hours checking the 4th edition books…

…Whoa! Things HAVE changed! 0_0

Not sure what I think of the Eberron setting yet. But, what happened to the Elemental Planes? Why is it a single, messed up thing? Did some war of godlike beings shatter them??

I’m glad to see so many familiar monsters in the Monster Manuals. But man, the descriptions are hard to read, especially with all the “types” and “subtypes”.

The basic classes and races are an odd sort… you have outsider (extraplanar) and semi-outsider PC races now. The basic classes are an odd choice… Clerics but no Druids; Warlocks, which are basically witches. What’s the difference between Warlords and Warriors? What happened to Sorcerers? Not that I ever really liked those. No Monks either…

…Oh wait, they are in the second! players handbook! With even MORE extraplanar races, yow!! Isn’t that unbalancing? Still, I love the freedom of combining any class and any race, so I can have Dwarven Wizards if I want to, ho ho. But speaking of customization… YEEEOWW!! Talk about too much of a good thing! Spells levels going into the 20s… Paragon and Epic paths… multiclassing, taking feats from other classes, sheesh!

Still, better to have too much than too little. I remember when we used to argue “how come gnomes can be illusionists but not full wizards?” Heh, simpler times… :stuck_out_tongue:

I also don’t really like the artwork in the books. Oh, nothing wrong with it, good designs, well detailed… but, I dunno… I guess I liked it more realistic, and more colorful… D&D used to be full of EXCELLENT art… just look at the covers of the Forgotten Realms novels. Minor peeve, however.

Please understand, this is just from a superficial checking of the books, and colored heavily by nostalgia. For all I know, if I read the books deeply I might end up loving them. Too bad I can’t afford to right now; just tossing my opinions to the ether here. I hear the reactions to 4th edition have been rather- controversial for some people…

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After most of the art from edition 3.5, which was decent at best, 4.0 is really good as far a visual appeal within. However, I did start with 3.5, so…

There’s also a 3rd PHB (yeah, kind of rediculous, but still might helpful) that will include the Monk class among other things. I’m still not sure what the planar mixing is about though - I think maybe to explain some sort of multi-planar elemental mating for backgrounds and such?

Spell levels aren’t based on the older level system, they’re now shown as what’s available at each level. It’s a decent trade off considering they don’t let wizards specialize in a specific school anymore - that’s somewhat taken care of with paragon paths.

All-in-all, I like 4.0 a lot because of how flexible it’s willing to be as long as your willing to dig through the books to find out the specific rules.

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Too much customization? No, way. From 3.5 to 4, things got a lot more stifling. You don’t have a lot of freedom to create characters that are outside the norm, which is something that I really enjoyed doing. Also, multi-classing is hooooorrible.

As far as Eberron… it’s a completely different ball of wax. It’s a more steampunk setting, people don’t know 100% whether or not the Gods exist… it’s a more gritty setting, overall. Sharn is quite possibly one of the most interesting cities in D&D history.

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D&D isn’t really the best system for characters outside the norm, truth be told.

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Considering “customization” in the old days meant “playing a multiclassed demihuman- and then with level caps” I’d say that yes, the options now are much, much more varied now! (Though this may have changed back in 3rd Ed, I never actually played it.) Even SKILLS were not invented until 2nd Ed!

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Yeah, I’m talking about from 3.5 to 4. 3rd and 3.5 were VAST improvements over 2nd ed D&D, and had a great deal of customization options. It isn’t as customizable as say, GURPS or Mutants and Masterminds, but it doesn’t need to be.

For example, my last D&D character was a half-elven rogue, but he was mainly an investigator in his line of work. You simply can’t make a character like that in 4th ed. :expressionless:

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I can’t really say anything in favour or against 4th ed, simply because I have only played 4th ed (no one in my area wanted to play, I had no money, I didn’t know people played over the net etc.) However, I can basically say that the game isn’t half bad. I can understand why people aren’t particularly pleased with the development of 4th edition, but I always thought it was because it was alot simpler than the previous editions.

the system they seem to have gone for is each power source has at least 1 of each role (bar Martial, which seems to have 2 strikers and no controller) and each role is varied based on the source (the warden gets more hit points than the paladin, but the Paladin has better defence) which I think makes sense, I feel, since it would be redundant to have a Primal and an Arcane defender being exactly the same.

but going back to my initial comment of 4th ed being simpler, I think it works, and can be used as an introduction guide for players, so they can go backward to the more advanced 3rd and 3.5 editions of the game

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my preferrence is 3.5 but you know if i really had the money i might try out 4e but since im poor :bowser: i got 3.5 on amazon for pennys compared to 4e so for me thats the deciding factor in role playing

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My buds and I play 4E using the PDFs and graph paper. :slight_smile:

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I got the books, but we use graph paper for the rooms and maps, and pennies or anything significantly shaped for miniatures.

I’m kinda hoping the 3D game table is good. It combines the benefits of table top and PbP, because, PbP is great, but it goes quite slowly, and I’m not near anyone enough to play table top properly. Hopefully the game table will do well.

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Miniatures, pfft. Back when I played we just used our imagination! (And the rulebooks, though it was our GM who owned them.) Miniatures and such were fun but expensive and totally unnecessary.

(…Doesn’t that sound like one of those “In my time, we went to school uphill in the snow” jokes? :hahaha; )

Anyway, one of the complaints I’ve heard about the 4th edition is that it’s “too much like a MMORPG”. Well, I guess it’s true that games like Warcraft are actually better known than D&D these days, so making the tabletop game more like them to appeal to the new generation of players would make sense. But man, not only was D&D THE original fantasy RPG, it had its own expansive universe that included everything from typical fantasy to sci-fi (Spelljammer was the absolutely nuttiest (and fun!) RPG concept I ever saw) and its kinda sad that its been left behind. Of course they could always reintroduce all that stuff over time…

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now i may have heard wrong and it may not be everyones cup o tea but i heard they were making a supernatural campaign setting useing 3.5 but who knows(thats supernatural the T.V. series)

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That sounds more like a hunter side of Vampires. It would be interesting to see it on the d20 system, though.

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I never really got into Supernatural. THen again, I had only ever seen one episode, so…

The thing I found funny about 4th ed was the actual fan reaction, the whole internet user over the top squeels that came along
“4th editon is nothing like 3.5! it’s a travesty! Its a crime! They hath forsaken Dungeons and Dragons! I’m going to complain about it on my live journal!”

to this I simply sat there and thought

“Well, I can see where you’re coming from, but… no one is making you play it, are they? It’s not like people in suits are going round, taking your manuals and replacing them with 4th ed ones. Just calm down and don’t play”

of course, to those people, logic like that fell upon deaf ears.

And besides, I thought the MMO thing was ok. I mean, Greyhawk was pretty much a huge MMO kinda thing, but no one complained about that (as far as I can tell).

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I play 3e and 3.5e (I’ve never played any before that simply because … I’ve never done it)

I think the major reason people get angry about the big changes is because it’s their game… Example : Michael Bay sucks… Transformers do not look like big metal jagged creatures that you cant see their faces when they are in their humanoid form. So someone (I wonder who…) would complain and call him out on it so the next time the creator makes it the right way. (5e … crosses fingers)

A huge problem with making D&D like a MMO is that MMOs have a high turnover rate but since it’s online it doesn’t take as much a toll on the game as a whole.
However pen and paper RPGs require the players to be face to face and if one quits it could be the end of the whole group , not to mention the joining rate of D&D and games like it aren’t as high as MMORPGs.

I do see your point though … I mean I have all the books for 3e at my finger tips on amazon so as I’ve said before … I’m peaches and cream…

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margeret weis productions is making the supernatural game it comes out soon still cant figure out what system it uses but that doesn’t suprise me since ive lived in indiana my entire life and just found out today that gen con is hosted every year in indy

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I think by “like an MMO” what they mean is that they’re making the game simpler and darker. Now, I don’t know this for a fact, since as I said I know almost nothing about 4th Ed and even less about Warcraft, but from what I’ve heard most MMORPGs seem to be what we used to call “hack-and-slash” affairs (killing monsters for treasure, even backstabbing your fellow players for it, with little to do beyond that.) Now it’s true that D&D was like that in the early days, but it had come along quite a ways since then, the story had a great importance as well. Eberron sounds a little too “punk” for a fantasy, even the Alignment system has been kinda muddled. However, in the old days D&D was always about having your campaign your own way, you could use the rules and settings as given or you could change them, in fact that was often half the fun. So if people don’t like Eberron or the rules changes, I’m sure they could just use older material instead, keeping whatever parts they like from the new. There’s certainly enough free D&D stuff floating around in the Net to do so.

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I can understand that. I had a friend in my group who played a Wizard with a huge assortment of AoE spells.
“I use Acid Arrow,”
“but that’ll hit me and the other players who are in melee range!”
“… and?”
L4D showed this side more than others as he’d race to the safe spots and proceed to use all the med kits and grenades. He ended up dying a fair few times in our campaign. Not becuase we purposely killed him, but because we kind of moved his healing priority to the very end of the list. I was a Paladin of Pelor, too, I should have kicked his evil hide ages ago, but he was really good at bluff checks.

The Eberron campaign setting I kinda ignored. I make my own settings, and I would usually do that for all table top games, because it would be rather difficult to keep to a specific recipe. But then again, that’s me

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I use Dragonlance mainly because I’m a huge fan of the novels… I hear there is going to be a 4e setting for Dragonlance so maybe I’ll give 4e another try when that comes out.

Anyone else love these smilies? Cause I do…:cool:

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Speaking of which. My most magnificent 4th ed moment thus far involved a guarded bridge that my party had to cross with about half a dozen mooks guarding it plus two surprises the GM had set up for us.

The GM was practically laughing manically at our impending situation right up until I cast a sleep spell and knocked out all but two of the six (including the larger of the two surprises). By the time the spell’s effects started to wear off we had all but routed them and had dispatched both heavy hitters to boot.