In a college town, I’m comparatively older than dirt. Younger than the mountains, as they say, but older than the trees. So when DnD 4e came out, I was curious (having grown up with 1E and played DnD Basic). I haven’t played DnD in years, but I keep abreast of the rules. It also helped when I saw some people at Geology Field Camp playing the game. Graciously, they let me look over their (collective) shoulders, so I got a glimpse of the game before ever reading the rules. I’ve also read several reviews about the game and lastly I borrowed a copy of the rulebooks so I could thumb through them. Here are my uncoordinated thoughts on the game:
4e is easy for people to pick up instantly?
Thats a outright lie. Its no harder or easier than any other edition. Yes, its all d20, but the amount of modifiers, pre-checks, after checks, fore checks, canceled checks, Rice Chex and Wheat Chex that go on in a round left me confused (and I was not the only one) where a round began and ended. And I wasn’t the only one, judging by the bewildered looks of the experienced DnD players there. The round is far too complicated for my tastes.. and, btw, this was a first level encounter with five party members fighting an equal number of kobolds. Not exactly what you would call “gripping” combat.
The rulebooks are intuitively laid out, and everything in there is exceptionally easy to find.
Another dirty lie. I went straight to the index for a half a dozen rules. (maybe today’s kids are too dumb to alphabetize?) only to find no entry. And when I went back into the rules to hunt and peck for the answers I was left with the same head scratching that is so familiar ot anyone who has played DnD. Sadly, this was the most familiar feeling I’d had throughout the entire review period.
Moving on to the actual rulebook / mechanics. I almost always play magic-users. (sorry folks, I still call them magic-users. Wizards are 11th level versions of that. I firmly believe that most of what is wrong with DnD stems from the day that they changed the class name to boost little Johnny’s ego.) So I tend to judge a game based on what they do to the spell classes. 4E continues WotC’s nerf-fest on them.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some rules I DO like. Such as…
At will spells: I like to think that by 20th level, I have cast MM enough that it’s so firmly ingrained in my head that I can do it at will. I think that in the grand scheme of things, MM is the DnD equivalent to remembering your own phone number.
Rituals: I like the idea of taking all the non-combat spells and turning them into rituals. I’d change the name, but I think it’s a great idea. Everyone gathering around and defending the mage in combat because he needs to cast Gate to get them out of the place. (or from a lower level, cast Knock to get the door open). That lends itself to some real roleplaying opportunities and that sort of “end of the episode” scenery. Plus, it frees up a whole mess of spell slots.
however, the above is overwhelmed by the horrible rules that follow, such as:
Spells don’t scale – Fireball is 3d6 + int mod (which won’t be more than +8 regardless) forever and ever. Save for half damage. Be ridiculed if you can’t take full damage and shrug it off. The aforementioned MM is something like 2d4 even when you’re 30th level. 1 missile, one target. Thats it.
Once per encounter spells – Fireball is a ‘once per encounter spell’. You can cast it once, then you gotta cast something else. I preferred the old system, where at least if my LIFE DEPENDED ON IT, i could cast it twice! And there’s a thrid category – ‘once per day’ spells. Can you guess how often you can cast ‘fly’??
Aggro rules – You know what? I didn’t even read the aggro rules on principle. Why? This is supposed to be a role-playing game. What the heck are aggro rules doing in a role-playing game? If I wanted that, I’d play WoW or CoH. Didn’t read them, wouldn’t use them. And anyone who says they are useful is a WoW wanker who should be smacked with the 1e DMG until unconscious.
Permanant # of hit points / level and getting tons of ability score increases – Seriously? We can’t roll our own HP now? And whats with the bumping up of ability scores? It was bad enough in 3E – it’s gotten worse in 4E. Now they just bump up everything! Its like Diablo. Can i take that +1 in Charisma and put it in something useful instead? Of course not, its 4e and thats the real theme of it – following the ’straight and narrow’ path.
There’s more – a lot more wrong with the game. The game was written to be used as code for an MMO. The game is dumbed down, the options for once you get past the first few levels are so limited that you are funneled down your respective ‘path’ – striker, controller, defender, brute, tank, blaster… oh wait, I’m channeling CoH again. But then, so was their design team. This is DnD for the WoW generation. Look, we’ve even shortened the acronym to two capital letters with a lower-case letter in between. There’s a term for people who rave about this game: “4-rons”. (rhymes with “morons”, you little 4ron). In my bookcase, I still have all the rulebooks for 1st Ed. They are literally the gold-standard (the spines are gold-colored) for the game. It was a broken thrown-together mess that required an Int of 10 or greater to play. But it was fun. You COULD break the game, if you had a terrible DM. But the great thing about it was that there were enough obscure rules that you could break the person breaking the game as well (and you’re talking to someone who once tossed someone into the center of the Planes of Concordant Opposition). Classes weren’t equally powered – MUs were ridiculously weak at lower levels. You played them for upper levels (sometimes they never came). It was called ‘paying your dues’.
They used to have a dumbed down version of DnD.. They called it Basic Dungeons and Dragons and it was supposed to get you interested enough to buy ADnD. I started out on Basic. At least it had a nice box and dice were included. (and it was about the third of the price of the rule-set out there today.)
I dunno. I watched Idiocracy last week and all I have to say is “we’re right on track”. Thanks WotC! 4rons.
