4th ed D&D

The Source has advance copies of the PHB, DMG, and MM. I had time to do a page through of the PHB and MM. My thoughts are as follows...

Character class section is freaking huge. Most of the book is devoted to it in fact. Makes sense since everyone’s basically a spellcaster. I didn't give to through a look at any one class, but I didn't really see any I wanted to play. Since I'm a ranger geek though, I paid a bit more attention to them. Still shoehorning you into either dual weapons or bow. 3/3.5 did the same thing, but they eventually branched into different places with it, 4th would have been served well to do the same.

I was pleased to see that the fighter (I looked at all his "utility" typed powers) had nothing to replace a wizards flight and teleport. Not that he can’t do that though by using rituals.

Evasion and mettle are now feats. Plenty of feats all around from the looks of things. You total out at 18 feats at level 30 (more from certain races like human). Far fewer skills. Each class looks like it locks you into certain skills when you take it. Less up front customizations on the player part in that regard. But it's not about what you know, it's about your host of combat abilities.

Wizards are now a sorcerer with a spell book. What do I mean? Well, you get those nifty abilities like everyone else, but as near as I can tell, wizards are the only one that puts them all down in their spell book. Oh, and I didn't see any rule for just adding more to your spell book accept for when you gain levels. And if you retrain a spell, it simply vanishes from your spell book. So in other words, you're a sorcerer, with a spell book. I think rituals can be put in there though, which is an edge for them, since it looked like you need to burn a scroll otherwise. Which, unless clerics have something similar, means wizards are better at bring people back to life... CRAZY!!

Also, on the subject of Wizards, no Wish. Not there. Not anywhere as near as I can tell. Not a Wizard spell (and I looked through them all, nada). Not a ritual. And Efreeti don't get it either. Now, it might be tucked away in the DMG, but I didn't look through that one.

Rituals, or “the spells that everyone gets.” Like, Raise Dead. And Scry. And at least one teleport if I'm not mistaken. Mass fly might have been in there too. So, yeah, why do we need the wizard and his spell book? Seriously, the hell??
There’s only one big chart for character advancement, which threw me when I looked under the fighter class for their progress chart. It has everything from how many powers a character gets, to XP to level, to number of feats. Ability gains go two +1 (to separate scores) and a few +1 to all scores. I didn't notice any stat bump tomes or manuals in the PHB, but I wasn't looking. I also just realized that I never noticed a chart for defense progression or BAB progression. I probably just missed it. *shrug*

Healing potions kinda blow, in my most humble of opinions, but I think the whole healing mechanic needs work all around. For example, the basic healing potion is a level 5 item. When you use it, it triggers one of your healing surges and instead of the normal number of hp restored, it restores 10. Period. A Healing surge normally restores 1/4 of your max. So as soon as you hit 40 hp, the low level potion is useless. Sure, it’s only 50gp, but still, nothing? The next potion is at level 15, and it gives back 25 (so if you have 100 or more hp, not going to do to much). At level 20 treasure you'll start to see potions that give you back 50 (and since HP is static, and you only get your con to it at first level, this might actually be a decent number). At level 25, you have the big one that can bring you back to life within one round (which is pretty cool, don't get me wrong), or if you're not dead give you back 50hp and allow you to make another save against all effects on you. So in other words, force feed a high level adventurer low level potions until he just can't heal anymore for the day.

Since I’ve already mentioned it, Raise dead. The ritual has a variable cost for material, however it only works on someone who’s been dead for no more then 30 days, regardless (I didn’t read what the gentle repose ritual does, but that might suspend that or something). It costs 500 gp to bring back 1-10th level characters. 5000 for 11-20. 50,000 for 21-30. When you're brought back to life, you have a -1 to all the relevant rolling and static stuff until you've passed three benchmarks (a benchmark being 2 fights in a row without using the camp command the rest action (long or short). Which means that you better get out there and beat the hell out of some stuff after you're back on your feet, or those long social encounters could really screw you over.

Alignments are as follows: Lawful good, good, unaligned, evil, and chaotic evil. *Sigh* The hell? I mean, really now, the hell? Cause chaos is always evil, and law is always good? It's nice that they didn't throw them away entirely though. I guess?

On the book itself. Art is nice, a little cartoony, but nice. I don't think I saw an iconic characters though. I saw some of 3rd eds iconic (I think I recall a Redgin getting raised at one point), but no new ones. Which is too damn bad, as that was just really cool. I liked seeing where they'd pop up in various books and modules. Racial blocks were okay. A little hard to navigate the character classes, as each could have easily been made its own chapter worth of material. An insane amount of page flipping or flash card making for every character is what it feels like players will need. Neither is an inherently bad thing, but it can slow down game play.

The index was a page. A page. Not helpful at all for things like, oh I don't know, the massive amount of special abilities each class now has. I mean, seriously, White Wolf does more of an appendix then that (sure, they don't do great appendix’s, but at least it's got some meat on its bones, as it were). 3/3.5 PHB had a far superior layout as far as that's concerned.

I forgot to take a look at the special actions in the combat chapter to see if they made any of that more playable. Wish I could comment on it, but alas I can not.
In general, it's going to be very hard to master the system. The guy playing the fighter is going to need to bring his PHB, and probably then some, to game. And isn't the whole point of playing a fighter not having to do that? (Okay, it's just one reason, but still...)

On to the Monster Manual.
Something I noticed when I was done with it was that there where no good aligned creatures in it. Hell, the Unicorn is now unaligned (which is total bullshit!). While there were plenty of unaligned creatures, and some with any as well, not one creature in there was any flavor of good. Wow. I guess all the good aligned critters out there are on a coffee break? Or are just keeping their heads down?

No earth, air, water, or fire elementals. The elementals under the Elemental heading are composite elementals of two different types. And there were few that were made from quasi/para elementals and a true. I have no idea if they're going to stick with the classic four western elements though. Ice and fire archons were both presented. And here I thought that sort of duality was lazy... Can I call shenanigans on that?

Quite a bit of recycled art from 3/3.5. Not just a little recycled, but cut and paste, exact images. The fuck? While I expect that from Palladium books, I don’t expect that from a new edition of D&D. All in all, the art was a mixed bag in the MM. I for one didn't like the picture of the war troll, which looked rather dumpy and uninspiring. As commented earlier, the art in general has a much more, cartoonish feel to it then previous editions. I’m not really down on it, but at the same time I'm not that happy with that aspect. It’s the colors I think, they were just a little too pronounced in some ways. And the outlines. Cartoonish.

Didn't really see anything presented as a template either. This is a big failing if you ask me. Templates were a wonderful way of customizing monsters. Just an awesome way to go about it, hands down.

In general, I don't know how well the monster customization thing is going to go. Unless a big chunk of the DMG is devoted to the non-PC classes, then there's not going to be a lot of variety to the monsters as you advance them, just some more HP and better attacks. At least, not anywhere near as much as PC's are going to get. Of course, they might just draw from the same lists as the PC classes, but then why call them something else? It was implied that the DMG had more info on these. Now, I am aware that the same can be said about advancing monsters in 3.x. However, when compared against the variety and potency of PC powers, it'd be a shame if the monsters cann't reflect a little bit of that, especially since they all have different classes they're based off of, so who knows if they can get the PC goodies at all. If not, or the equivalent, I'm gonna call "lame" on that.

Dragons. As I already said, there where no good creatures in the MM, so the metallic’s were absent. Each of the five chromatic had four stat blocks given: young, adult, old, ancient. No age category charts like editions previous. While this might end up in the Chromatic Draconomicon, it was still fail not to have it in the core. Especially for the 3rd party companies, depending on what books Wizards adds to the new game license. Dracolich was also core. Good to see.
Shifters were in the MM, and that was cool. I like shifters. I'm sure they're playable, but since I don't really understand the new format for the block, I couldn't tell you what they look like as a base race.

Fewer things like vermin and animals. No block of just dire animals either, or dinosaurs. Dire versions are in with the normal versions of the animals, if applicable. *shrug* I liked the way that 3.x did it personally, but to each their own. For example, no stats for just a wolf. I guess all the bigger, meaner creatures ate the normal wolves?

Tarrasque weights in at level 30. Only thing bigger was Orcus from the looks of things, at level 33. While it's nice to see Orcus back in core, it would have been nice to see another few heavy hitters at that 30+ level of power (like a level 31 and 32 threat as well). That’s not really a critique, just a “wow, that would have been cool!” Anyway, Big T can not be killed. At all. You can only beat the hell out of him so bad that he goes back to sleep. There are theories that one could destroy the Big T by dragging him to another world, where he wouldn’t have the same potency anymore. But, yeah, no killing the Tarrasque! EVAR!!!!

As said previously, Efreeti no longer grant wishes. And now I'm going to ask: "what the mother fuck is up with that?" That's the whole thing they do. They grant wishes. That's the myths about them. It's what Genie do! That’s not just D&D either, that's the legends that the creature was based off of. The hell? They took away wish. Again, maybe it's tucked away in the DMG, but I'm not holding my breath.

Skeletons and zombies both had interesting entries, but didn't seem to be templates. If they were, it looks like a bit more work to apply them. Again, didn't give a hard look to those entries, so I'm not 100% sure. Just my impression.

So, that's what my impressions where.


For those who said, TL;DR, allow me to sum up: Over all, I'm not impressed. While some things looked neat, it doesn't look like D&D. Just some other game dressed up like it. I'm going to take another look at the MM and page through the DMG on Monday, when I'm at my FLGS for my bi-weekly Star Wars mini's game.

I'll probably post some more here when I've paged through the MM again and the DMG.

I like to be a well informed complainer.