Thoughts about D&D 4E

[erichris]

I'll give you my Good, Bad and Summary so far.... I haven't played enough to give any kind of final judgment. Call this first impressions.

GOOD:

What 4E seems to do well is to make combat fast paced and make the players feel they have lots of options. As a rogue, my previous edition options were to pretty much swing a sword, shoot a crossbow, or try to backstab, in combat. In 4E, I felt like I had several "buttons" I could push during combat, almost like an array of spell-like abilities... some inexhaustible, some used more sparingly. A bit like deciding whether to blow Action Points in Eberron to activate special abilities and whatnot.

I feel like it made the characters feel more "custom" and "special" without resorting to an array of splatbooks to find loopholes and sneaky rules.

Combat went quickly, and since the options were laid out ahead of time, it didn't take a lot of on the spot math to decide what could be done.

I liked the simplified/condensed skill list. It made that part of character creation so much easier.

We were playing 1st level characters, but we all had many powers and what seemed like a lot of hitpoints. The standard first-level Kobold Encounter was challenging all the same. We had some near-deaths, but we were able to keep on playing without an artificial naptime. Very cinematic, no longing for higher levels... in past editions, I've often started everyone at 3rd level just to skip the high early character mortality and dull encounters.

BAD:

It's not D&D. Well, at least it didn't have the same "flavor" as past editions. It is a really sweeping change, possibly even moreso than from 2nd to 3rd editions. I won't bitch about missing races/classes (I'm sure the gnomes and druids and barbarians and such will be back in the PHBII or in splatbooks or online content), but I'll say that it felt TOO focussed on combat. All those "buttons" made it feel TOO much like a MMORPG. I could just visualize the button bar in WoW. If that's the goal, why not play WoW?

Tables, tables tables!!! So many listings for the powers and such... it's bewildering! How do you know one from another? It's too many options, in a lot of ways, and too subtle differences between the options.

Summary:

While 4E was fun to play for the combat aspects, and chargen was quick and the resulting "build" didn't take rocket science to manage, it didn't have that D&D feel somehow. Maybe if I play out the whole demo, I'll "get" it more... we'll see.

I'm planning on buying the Player's Handbook, but not the other books, since I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable DMing it.

Chris

[Auci]

Hey all this is Justin. Don't worry about the gnomes. Their stat write up is in the MM and it will get a full history, appearance, etc write up in the PHB II. Druid and barb aren't confirmed but it is very likely they will appear there as well.

I'd like to add on my thoughts to this.

Good:

The skill list is very nice. Being able to take one skill and being able to do many things with it instead of spending points into three similar skills makes sense although I do miss the ability to 'dip' into skills.

The ability to do several different things in combat is nice however it can be overwhelming at times to remember all the different abilities that you have and which targets have been marked, quarried, etc. I forgot several times to use my hunter's quarry and I'm sure the same goes for others who have similar abilities.

Combat seemed to go about the same speed to me as 3.0/5 but that could increase as players get more used to the system.

Enemies seem much tougher now and require much more thought and tactics to defeat them which I like. Maybe this is why they left the barbarian out of the PHB.

Being able to use two different abilities for every save/AC is very nice and makes things more flexible.

The adventurer's pack is also very cool although I do miss the list of mundane items in the old PHB. And where's my acid and alchemist's fire?

Everything seems much more condensed and very smooth. Combat advantage taking place of a lot of different things from 3.0/5 works much better as well as the static -2 for cover with no percentage to miss etc.

Bad:

I did not feel that the characters were as customizable as in 3.0/5. Maybe at first level they are but the lack of true multiclassing leaves characters feeling very static. Also I do not like that if you want to be a good archer for example you have to be a ranger. You can no longer go for a fighter and even if you 'dip' into ranger multiclass all you get is the hunter's quarry feature 1/encounter.

Wizards get nerfed now. I know they were trying to balance and everything and they are good for wiping out minions but minions aren't always going to be there. Wizards are supposed to be more powerful now I don't even know if they are on par with the other classes especially since most of their spells require rituals and some of their more powerful spells are only daily powers. Fireball 1/day with no way of recharging?

Clerics also get nerfed I feel. No longer do you need one in the party and they no longer seem to have a defined role. Sucks to that they don't have plate proficiency.

Speaking of that why don't fighters have plate proficiency?

Most of the racial feats suck with a few exceptions. The eladrin soldier feat is very nice but it leaves me asking why doesn't every race that has a racial weapon proficiency have a feat like that?

Why do rogues have a hodgepodge of weapons they are proficient with? They should go back to all simple and throw in short sword and crossbow.

As Chris said it does seem very combat oriented and very much like WoW or CoH. It's just not Dnd. I feel like chances for good RPing don't come up often enough and that there were hardly any skill challenges when out on the adventure.

Even though there's a ton of powers they all seem the same.

According to the DMG it takes 10 encounters to level up. This seems like a lot to me especially considering how difficult the encounters have been so far.

I don't get why a wizard and a fighter should both level their bab at the same rate now (1/2 level). Most of the wizard powers are already targeting a lower defense (Ref/Fort/will) than the fighter targeting AC so why should they level the same? They never have in previous editions.

--

These are just initial thoughts and once we play more maybe my mind will have changed. While I did like it and definitely want to continue I'm still on the edge about the system. I suppose it's got about the same amount of things wrong with it as the old system. The biggest thing that bugs me is the lack of customization. That was the part I loved about the previous edition.

I also want to thank RJ for running a very good game (even if he did try to kill my character). It went very well and ran very smooth.

[RJ]

I agree with alot of what you guys said. I'm still on the fence about this edition. I would not mind playing in a 4E game but would probably prefer 3.5 right now.

On the not feeling like D&D issue, I disagree with both of you. The system is there to make combat fast paced and interesting. This leaves plenty of room for a DM to run roleplaying or whatever as much as he wants and have the combat portions go relatively quickly. As I said before this module is extremely combat focused, but that does not mean another DM could not run a less combat focused game. Also you have barely scratched the surface of what is in this module, while the RP aspects are minimal there are skill challenges and puzzles that I consider very iconic D&D that you have yet to encounter. This was the first game and everyone had just created new characters with no backrounds or personalities and were learning just how to play them. So how much RP can you really expect?

[erichris]

On the not feeling like D&D issue, I disagree with both of you. The system is there to make combat fast paced and interesting. This leaves plenty of room for a DM to run roleplaying or whatever as much as he wants and have the combat portions go relatively quickly.
...
This was the first game and everyone had just created new characters with no backrounds or personalities and were learning just how to play them. So how much RP can you really expect?

It wasn't the combat focus that made me say it doesn't feel like D&D, that is a separate issue, and I grudgingly agree with you that a DM could use pretty much any system to be combat-focussed or not. It is a lot of things about the rules and game-play and basic flavor that makes it feel like this is a completely new game, not a natural evolution of previous editions.

More specifically... saves are now like separate ACs... the flavor of the classes, the shift in the roles of the classes, the addition of Powers, demonic and draconic races being common while traditional ones go by the wayside... these add up to the feeling like we're playing a different game.

Which is not to say it's bad, there are plenty of not-D&D RPGs out there that I'm happy to play.

Chris

[Auci]

I was kinda hoping that it was just combat focused for the first game and there would be some more stuff later on. Hopefully it will start to feel more like DnD then. I will hold off my full judgement until after we've played some more. And I'm not saying that the game wasn't fun. It was, it was just different.

[Karl]

The jury is still out in my mind, though I'm leaning towards preferring 3.5 also at this point. I'm having fun with the preview so far.