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Average Customer Rating:

You Freakin Nerds	Customer Rating:
Love the newest edition of D&D. So far its been a blast to play, and i can't wait for more books to come out. I highly recommend to anyone that likes D&D, RPGs and even for fans of MMO RPGs. I find it easier to learn than 3rd edition.

Interesting concept have yet to play

Customer Rating:

I have been looking over the 4th edition have a lot of complementary things to say about it. One is it reminds me of first edition. It is simple to play and get started. Characters are created quickly and all of a role in the game. Here are the positives: All players are useful during combat. No longer is your mage the weakest member of the party at low level. The at will powers for each member allows them to contribute to combat through out combat. Encounter powers allow players to unleash a big spell for each fight. Daily powers are their signature powers, but are limited. Character creation is fast. You can roll or you can use a point buy system. If you use the point buy system you don't feel vastly inferior to other characters. The game now gives players 3 stats to focus on for their powers. Feats are similar to the 3.5. If you pick correct feats you can sort of multiclass or make your character more unique. Wizards can begin to train up to plate armor or use a sword. You can get some abilities of other classes, but it is not a true multiclass, but rather a mixture of abilities. You generally won't get fireball casting fighters, but it only takes 2 skills (as feats) to get a fighter who can cast utility spells called rituals. Combat favors levels. Some can argue against that, but it is nice that your 30th level fighter is not screwed if he doesn't have armor. Players heal quickly so this helps speed the game to more heroic combats. They cut down on skills and languages. They also made it so each player has some training in basic skills. Training represents a bigger advantage (+5). Also weapon skills make more sense so a wizard can use a crossbow because it is simple rather than arbitrarily limit them. No longer does it make you have to focus on a few core skills just to keep pace with a skill requirements. Also makes character creation much faster. Rituals are cool as they allow players to cast utility spells outside of combat and aren't wasting spell slots. If you need comprehend languages you don't stop for the day and relearn a spell for comprehend languages. It was one thing when there were multiple players who were wizards, but basic party of 4 or 5 usually meant you were either prepared for combat or for utility and if you picked wrong you were screwed or slowed the game down. 1st level characters are decent and meaningful. No longer are the first 2 levels sneeze and die levels. You can be heroic from the start. The dungeon master's guide is improved. It has advice for new DMs, but the ability to modify the monsters for -+3 levels it works well. Some people complain about the monsters not being like they remember there are rules to help fix that in the DMs guide. I think this is a big improvement where you know what happens. Traps are good as well and XP is better explained. For the monster manual the mnsters are given clear xp and you have minions (basically fodder) and other monsters in different roles. At the end are helpful hints if you want to make them PCs. Now for the negatives of the system. Only a few classes. Everyone has particular classes they favor and many have been omitted. There is PHB2 coming out next year and truthfully I think that is ok. It is a problem is you only have a few players (2-3) who can't fill all roles. Combat runs on miniature expectations. I like miniatures myself, but I would be happy without having to have tiles and miniatures to run combat. At least it is not WYSIWYG. Players lack powers outside of combat. Almost all of the powers involve combat. Almost every power does damage and they are intended for a violent confrontation. Rituals help offset that for spellcasters. Still the games seems to focus more on combat and less about influence, charms, etc. The xp system says to overcome a monster/trap gives xp as long as the threat of failure has some consequence. There do not seem to be bonuses for talking or overcoming through non violent means others than the bluff skill. The DMs guide for experienced DMs has maybe 40 pages worth reading. The rest is fluff, advice or examples. The monster manual lacks fluff. It does not seem like much, but there is very little as far as history, social organization or anything that gives flavor to monsters. It is hard to get excited. Fine for experienced DMs, but not so good for those who want a 3 dimensional world ready for them. Overall it is a good system. Level based class systems aren't my favorite, but players who play have a distinct role. The DM will worry less about rule lawyers and he can focus on making a believable world. If you want to play a quick pickup game you can do that. No player will be sitting around because he can't hit a monster because he ran out of spells. The point of roleplaying is to spend time with friends and have a good social activity and this fosters that kind of activity.

D&D 4E is the best.

Customer Rating:

I haven't been this excited to play D&D since 1987. Gone are all of time consuming +1 this and that welcome to the latest version of D&D, the game that you actually get to play rather than debate. This version of the game is quick and easy to play. Every class has something to do EVERY round and not just fire the crossbow. 4E brings D&D back to its basics with out the power munchkin factor that 3.0 & 3.5 became overburdened with. People are going to complain that they can't play a 5th level Fighter/7th Level Wizard/ 8th Level Rogue. Well guess what? You shouldn't have been playing one to begin with. These same folks probably got upset when the wheel was invented too. Try D&D 4.0 out... I think you will love it. Unless you hate the wheel...in that case go back to your cave and grunt about the good old days.

Much Function, Little Form

Customer Rating:

So, after telling myself that I wasn't going to do it, that I was happy with 3E and that I didn't need to go through the "D&D arms race" again, I finally broke down and picked up the three new 4E corebooks. Although I did not purchase the slipcase edition, I figured that this would be the best place for this review, as I did purchase the three books at once, and I'm trying to review the system as a whole, as opposed to any single book. I'd like to be able to give this game an exact 2.5-star rating, as I feel that it falls neatly along that line, but as Amazon seems to want to restrict me to whole stars, I'm going to use the D&D method and round down. "Ease of use" seemed to be the watchword for the designers of this new edition, and pretty much everything in the system, from the nuts-and-bolts math of "add half your level to everything," to the choices present in character creation, to the revision in combat options, seems to be pointed in that direction. It's hard to create an useless character in this game, and that eternal hobgoblin of game balance -- combat -- has been addressed by focusing a large amount of energy into making sure that everyone comports themselves equally well on the battlemat. Gone is BAB; instead, every character adds half their level to the appropriate stat bonus for their roll. Yes, this means that your wizard is as combat-trained as your friend's fighter, with only your Strength bonus as a difference. Gone are saving throws; the old saves from 3E have been translated into defenses similar to AC that the "attacker" (be that a monster, trap or other) rolls against. Anything that offers a save merely asks that you roll a 10 or better on a d20, again guaranteeing that every character has an equal chance to save against a prolonged effect. Even armor class has been altered quite a bit; armor itself provides less protection, but again you get to add half your level, in a move reminiscent of the Defensive Bonus from such games as Iron Heroes (in fact, Mearls contributed to this edition, and both the AC revision and healing surges are his brainchildren from that previous game). Gone is multiclassing; a broad range of feats and the ability to take Paragon Paths at 10th level and Epic Destinies at 20th step into the gap, but allow nowhere near the breadth of options found in 3E. Gone are the grappling rules, replaced by the simpler "Grab" option; gone, too, are sundering and disarming attacks. Gone are the long and often bewildering lists of spells available to spellcasters; what they're left with are the cream of the crop in combat ability, but offer little outside of that arena (those "utility" powers that are still available are generally unusable more than once a day). It's a game that knows what it wants, and it's pretty sure it knows what you want, too. And that's not exactly a bad thing. Given the options present in games like Exalted or Deadlands (or, God forbid, GURPS), I've seen players go into Decision Paralysis that completely shut down their ability to create a character or go through a simple combat, due to one overriding thought -- "What if I choose poorly?" You can't choose poorly in 4E. You copy your stats from the Players' Handbook to your character sheet, fill in a few blanks (with a wink and a nod as to what you should be filling them with), and proceed to move your character through his routine, confident that he'll never underperform (or overperform) when things go south and the swords come out. Ultimately, it's a very safe game decision-wise, but it's true that it also lacks the ability to accomodate a very wide variety of character types. So, for example, if you were hoping to focus most of your character's abilities on skills and languages, making her the party's "knowledge battery" at the expense of her combat prowess, you'll need a new character concept. Skills are either trained or untrained (there is no accumulation of skill points from level to level), and again, half your level comes into play, so no one character can really be more or less skilled than another; they're only proficient in different areas. And while it's true that WotC will no doubt offer us a buffet of additional powers in upcoming supplements and through "D&D Insider," those powers will still be laid over the safety-net foundation of the core rules, and doubtless balanced to be completely even with other powers from other classes. In the end, it's a hard game to screw up, but it's a hard game to excel at, too, simply because all decision trees present in the game have been perfectly balanced for exceeding, almost painful, equality. True, this eliminates a lot of the nightmares of the previous edition, but it also eliminates a bit of the beauty, leaving us with a game that contains a lot of function, but very little form.

Simpler to Create Characters, Fun, but Fewer Options

Customer Rating:

This is the first edition of D&D that I've been able to get a sizable group together to play with for more than a couple of sessions. A few factors contributed to this; for instance, the books have larger print and friendlier layouts. The largest factor, though, is that the game is just easier to play. It was easy for most people to get overwhelmed by the complex mess of rules of 2nd and 3rd edition, so I was never able to get many of my other friends to join in. 4th edition has class build suggestions and combat that goes more quickly. Much of the more "streamlined" rules has to do with with the designers deciding that they were designing the rules for a game to be played instead of rules to simulate a reality in which a game *could* be played. Powers are tied pretty closely with a class, so instead of imagining a pool of martial abilities, arcane abilities, or divine abilities that were shared among different class types, the designers could just say "a fighter gets this ability at level X" and not worry as much about how that could potentially be unbalancing if another similar class got it. Players and enemies don't need to share the same types of progression. This is a net plus, but some of the mechanics don't make as much sense as previous editions if you tried to translate it to the "physics" of the game world. As mentioned before, the designers were less interested in creating rules to simulate a fantasy world as much as they were interested in creating a fantasy game. It does make some of the "powers" harder to imagine how they would work if you are the sort to do that. It also felt that the types of characters you could create were more limited, but that's perhaps the price of having a game that is more playable. It has been thoroughly fun thus far.