hoshnasi
Hobbling hero
My D&D experience started in college with version 3/3.5. I liked it alot, but it had a steep learning curve. Couple that with drinking and we often spent alot of time sorting out the details and rules of some of our crazier ideas we had "Can I play a Pixie fighter?" - "Sure! Just let me get the rule book and give me 30 minutes."
However, that complexity did allow anything to happen and we had tons of fun and fond memories.
Naturally when 4th edition came out I heard alot of nay-saying "Its dumbed down", "It has lost all flexibility", and so on. My buddy in particular (our DM) didn't really think much of it. That changed last week when he sat down and read some of the core rules. In and instant he snatched up the book and started making a campaign, which we started last night. A abridged version of a review would be "Tons of fun, without getting stuck in the rules. Or having to remember too much of those same rules."
I had a character made in 20 minutes with the help of the guided list towards the front of the players hand-book. Rolling stats, GONE. replaced with a pretty straight forward point system, all stats start at 8 and you invest "points" to raise them up. I went with more of a even slope with my highest two stats being 16, (str and int). The rogue went full 18 in dex. Why I saw this as a value was WE NO LONGER HAD TO ROLL STATS!!!!! THANK THE LORD. We have literally spent the whole night getting through everyones rolls. Often our tank would end up completely gimped with a horrible stat-line too
The next thing I appreciated was the new power system. Regardless if you are a caster, cleric, rogue or fighter you have these new exploits. There are At-Will powers that can be performed at anytime, an example is magic missile. Yes, that is right, magic missile is now more of a usable skill that can miss that a spell. GONE are the days of spell points and saying "Well, we're all going to camp till the cleric regens his sp." There is also Encounter Powers which can be used once per experience (5-6 minute rest period to regen) and Daily Powers. Which again can only be used once and then require a day to regen. Daily Powers are very powerful, followed by Encounter and then daily which make up the meat and potatoes of attacking and replace "Slash" and other stands like "Shoot".
I could go on and on here, but in the end I think 4th edition will get a pretty wide following, much more so that 3rd edition. While playing a friends girlfriend when watching us battling some kobolds said "Ok, this is pretty cool I want to play" she read the players handbook for ten minutes and had a pretty good idea of how everything works in making a character. She had never played D&D and no concept of table-top gaming.
Expect things to get expensive though. I can already predict a huge number of expansion books to follow the players handbook. More so than 3rd edition. There is alot of meat left off in the current players handbook and a bunch of standard classes like the bard and monk have disappeared. I expect to see them in expansion books relatively soon.
Give it a whirl if you used to play D&D!
:whistling: :laugh:
