[ rant ]

And I am ... really not interested in it. I just read both the DMG and the PHB. I have yet to crack my MM.

I wanted Wizards to prove me wrong. They got a few things better than 3.5, but they did three things that killed it for me.

1. Feats will mostly favor combat options. And when I say that, here's an example:

Improved Misty Step [Warlock]
Prerequisites: Int 13, warlock, fey pact
Benefit: Your Misty Step now allows you to teleport an additional 2 squares.

Note the benefit. Which leads me to the second point -

2. It is heavily reliant on having a square map and miniatures. Or representations of miniatures or something. You don't have to have them, but you do. What I mean is while you don't have to have any, the rules become weirdly ambiguous without them. AoE spells/effects, for example. Spells whose ranges are measured in squares instead of distance are another.

3. They took most of the broken things in 3.5 and looked at it this way: How can we bring more players to D&D? The answers are apparently thus - make it like an MMO, add more player centric ideas, and try to cut down on player record-keeping. Oh, and make it seem like there's a winning condition, not just an open-ended experience.

Which is great for the players, but what about the DM? Uh, not much there. UNLESS you want to use the Insider service to hold your games and keep track of all the stuff the players don't want to on the computer. And if you want to evolve your game from basic to heroic, they'll sell you more expanded rules in more books. Heroic to Epic? Even more books. Although the PHB and the DMG say you don't need to, it's IMPLIED for a better experience all around. The little text boxes on the bottom even remind you of the Wizard products that can help you out as a DM.

Now, while this is great for most gamers, it is not for me. It may actually help out WWG, since WWG does offer a lot of maps and terrain for miniatures gaming. I wish it offered way more in terms of DM help and an easier system for the DM, but alas. DMs are one of your most important resources in an RPG, but still, we're neglected in terms of making things easier while maintaining the fun. Some of the character options undermine the power of the DM in a lot of ways.

Chances are, I'm going to take some of what I like from this game and go with it. It is - after all - D&D: Iron Heroes. Only they couldn't call it that because Monte Cook would have their asses after spending an action point (lol).

I'll give WotC one prop. Their new rulebooks are nicely organized. And very pretty. The art is fantastic. Almost WoW in nature, kept to standards found in the newer Magic the Gathering games, and still pretty D&D. And magic seems a little more potent and useful. I personally would have went with a mana pool type system, and not a role/cool-down type of idea, but I'm not the designer.

That's my two-cents, and some of you may not agree and find it fantastic. I wish you well in your games, and hope as a DM (or that the DM in your games) that it does not overwhelm and undermine the storytelling experience. I can't see it being overly useful to me, or as fun. I feel that I wasted my time with Wizards of the Game Workshop ... I mean, Coast.

[ / rant ]

Thanks for the quick review. I'm sorry the game doesn't suit your playstyle, but most of the changes you mention don't seem that bad to me. Of course, I don't get to roleplay much (ever?) anymore, so I'm really looking forward to hopefully tapping into some online roleplaying via their tools.

I always found that most times I played D&D, the DM would rush us through the first ten levels to "get to the good stuff". You'd have a bar fight, or something else traditional at level 1, but walk away level 3. I hated it. For me that was largely powerleveling and not roleplaying at all.

Having to purchase new books for heroic and epic is not a problem... hopefully it'll encourage people to enjoy each level and not rush to the "endgame".

1" movement makes sense to me as well, as does strongly encouraging usage of miniatures.

Arabin

Could you be more specific on how the new system is harder on the DM? This is a big concern for me.

I don't plan on updating to 4.0 since I have 40+ 3.5 books (various publishers) so don't see the need. I saw nothing "broke" about 3.5 except WOTC and other publishers trying to think of every possible feat, every possible class, prestige class, etc. How many freakin' classes are really necessary?

I'm sure that WOTC will stop calling them "Adventures" and change it to Quests so that MMO players will go "oh, it's a quest".... and not have them go "What the hell is an adventure"... (My son's friends who were MMO players found it odd that they were called "acventures" and not "quests" when introduced to D&D).

@Arabin, sorry to hear about your experience Mate. I make my players earn every freakin' level they get. But then I should have my on-line name as "Bastard DM" or "DMfH" (Dungeon Master From Hell"

CCotD'

I wonder if you have the same "copy" i saw, I have yet to really look through the DMG, or PHB, i oddly broke into the MM first, maybe as i am a GM more than a player, and know what Critter A does, and Critter B does, and wanted to see how they changed. I am Still Widely up in the air, i want to read the books before i make up my mind on 4th, and i didn't get my hands on 4th till tuseday, and have not had time to do anything with it since then.

I love also the Midnight setting... I would love to go from the LOTR world to the Midnight world... something like play a few generic games... and then go to Midnight... (like Evernight but with a bit more of information about the places...)

McClaud, that sounds like a fun adventure you have going on there... and it takes a decent GM/DM to pull it off. I think I've partially suffered from never having a great DM, and only once or twice having a fairly good one. I tried my hand at it once and failed horribly... just wasn't for me.

I know the expense with switching to a new system is a nightmare, but the DM often gets dumped with all the work... spread things out. If players want to switch to 4th ed, make them buy you the books, supply the miniatures, paint some miniatures, etc. You have to spend hours coming up with adventures and keeping things on track, the least they can do is help with the financial burden

I'm looking forward to more online tools being available, as it'll hopefully mean I get to play something.

I know people do not like the link with MMOs now, but it's a huge market, and kids that are growing up with WoW and LOTRO being the norm would find old pen and paper games, or PC games like Dungeon Master or even, perish the thought, X-Com, to be a waste of time. I've played with players that think of an rpg as waffle-before-the-fight, and I've played with people who have tried LARP during a tabletop rpg sessions, siting at the table in a chainmail coif refusing to break character at all. I prefer something in the middle. Sometimes the fighting is good, sometimes I really enjoy all the non-fighting... depends on the adventure, the DM, the other players, whether my coffee was strong enough

Arabin

Wow, the way you describe it, things really do seem a pain. I agree with you about the dying/death thing. Resetting of skills in between encounters is definitely influenced by video games... not sure if it's good or bad... just very different from the usual. Mind you, I always hated playing a cleric, for example, and having to tell the party we need to sleep, even though we just had breakfast an hour ago... just to restore abilities.

Surge sounds a bit like a healing potion... not really sure what they are trying to do there.

In defense of MMOs being MMORPGs, back when UO was still cool, (before EQ and AC that is), the game had a lot of roleplayers. I was involved in a player run community, and was a well known carpenter. I had my little shop set up, and people would come to me when planning in game weddings etc. I'd spend days chopping wood to make enough tables for the wedding feast. Then you had the players who wanted to destroy everything who would march into town and start killing people... and the town would sound the alarm and fight back. It actually felt like a village protecting itself from raiders. Good times.

Nowadays, with WoW, LOTRO, etc. I'll agree that most people don't do any roleplaying at all. Sheesh, most people don't even bother to read quest text. I have been dropped by groups before that didn't want to wait for me to read the text. Definitely lost the RPG element these days.

Arabin

I haven't played a MMORPG for, hmm, a good 6 months now, but when I did I just made it a point to look for RPG guilds, servers and communities; they are out there. Unfortunately, roleplay servers suck; they have no mechanism of policing them and keeping the non-roleplayers out

Oh, and I wasn't flaunting 'I don't care what you say, I'm going to but it anyways!', I just thought it was cheap enough I could turn around and get my money back out of it, if it is a complete turd.

I am beginning to see where they are going with this. They are making it so complicated, you will have no choice but to subscribe to their service just to keep track of everything.

Sounds like the classes have balancing issues if a battle cleric, who needs to split his time between training and priestly duties, is way more powerful than a fighter, who does nothing but fight.

Arabin

Paragon classes are going to be brutal.

I'll let you know that much right now.

Hmm. One thing I always loved about D&D, in all versions, was the clearly defined roles of Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Thief. I know MMOs have changed the way most people think of roles, and it's more like Tank, Healer, Nuke, DPS, etc. Is D&D going down that path now, ignoring the roleplaying of a thief/rogue and focusing purely on the dps?

Arabin

Somewhat.

Roles are what they call them now, and yes, the 4th edition has DPS ability now. You can play a thief defender if you don't have a fighter to take the role of defender. You just declare your role at the beginning of a combat round to be **** and you spend an action point (if I remember correctly) and you can assume that role until either combat is over or you want to change your role. The role then gives you a bonus to all sorts of things, like an additional healing surge if you take leader or something.

The one thing about roles is that the system is made for five PCs. If you have more than five PCs, the system is a bit broken in that one role can be taken multiple times (or an optional, similar role can be taken). If you have three or less PCs, you don't play with roles. Which is kinda weird and backwards the way the system works, if you ask me.

It reads like this:

Character Role

"Each character class specializes in one of four basic functions in combat: control and area offense, defense, healing and support, and focused offense. The roles embodied by these functions are controller, defender, leader, and striker. The classic adventuring party includes one character of each role: wizard, fighter, cleric, and rogue. Character roles identify which classes can stand in for each other. For example, if you don’t have a cleric in your party, a warlord serves just as well in the leader role.

"Roles also serve as handy tools for building adventuring parties. It’s a good idea to cover each role with at least one character. If you have five or six players in your group, it’s best to double up on defender first, then striker. If you don’t have all the roles covered, that’s okay too—it just means that the characters need to compensate for the missing function. Future volumes of the Player’s Handbook will introduce additional classes for all these roles."

If you look at the MM, the monsters also have roles, and they are very much like an MMO with tank, artillery, buffer, debuffer and the like as the names of these roles.

Ok, so you were right that it is a paper version of an MMO now. I understand them wanting to cash in on the new demographic, but if that type of gamer wanted to play pen and paper RPGs, I would expect them to go for... I don't know... something like .

Oh well, guess I'll hold out until 2010 when D&D 5.0 is released ;D

Arabin

- Okay, the definitive hero level - for many DMs I encounter, I always hear from them that they never really know when to really step up the difficulty for players. Does the fifth, eighth or tenth level step up to the next level, or is it highter/lower, etc.? For them, usually CR levels were somewhat confusing.

In the DMG, on thing I did like is that they basically summarized things like monster HP, average damage, average PC HP, etc. for the DM to compare when they reach a certain level. Like between levels 1 and 9, they say the average PC damage is between a range of * and * (can't remember, don't have the book on me). That's helpful, since you know about what to expect and throw at PCs so you don't under or over do it.

- Every PC has a set number of powers they can evoke per circumstance. At Will, Encounter (which should read per encounter), and Daily. Some races get more, some classes get more, and some other factors may give you more. On average, it's not so hard to track them. IF they work as arranged with no exemptions.

But that isn't the case. Some feats and other powers allow you to use a power twice or more in a situation. My personal favorite is my friend's example of how it actually stopped a combat encounter cold and they had to start the round over. Essentially, they were able to use an encounter power four times in a round at different times because a feat activated a warlock power that activated the encounter power a second time. Then another power activated the power again a third. And then the monster becoming Bloodied triggered another feat that activated the power a fourth time. Power gave a stacking bonus to the heroes, and negative modifier to the monsters. By the fourth time, the DM said, "Wait, so are you at +8 or +5 for the power, and -4 or -2?" At which backtracking started an argument of semantics and they just decided not to do it again and started over.

Yeah, we're not going to agree on simplicity = blandness. I think the balance problem actually comes from not fixing previous issues, but trying to up the powers of other classes and such that then unbalances it the other way.

I'm also fond of feats, but I'm not fond of MORE feats that only build up over and over and allow twinking. I finally got that under control in 3.5 by abolishing some feats since they unbalanced my party and made some players give up because player A was able to do their job now. While that may have seemed like a good thing, to the present mindset of a lot of younger gamers, different is good. No one likes clones, or things that make the other players fit in all roles (although for the player, it's fine). I have a player who said if I let arcana and divine mix, it's a no go. I sorta agree in the circumstances upon which he listed. He said that D&D is already enough like Tolkien, we don't need Maia-like spellcasters and Elrond like elves running around everywhere.