ImberCorvus Blog

I figured I’d start with something I know a fair amount about and something that I get asked about a lot in my interactions with the gaming community.

4^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons

To give a little background I started out in the tail end of 3^rd Edition D&D and was consumed like my peers by the 3.5 revisions. I will note here that I never played 2^nd Edition other than the video games based on it. I will also note that when 4^th Edition materialized out of nowhere and everyone was raving about how the people who had invested their time and money in the product were going to be outraged I was one of those people, and I wasn’t outraged. At last count I personally own fifty nine 3.5 revision Dungeons & Dragons manuals and nine 4^th Edition manuals.

I played 4^th Edition for the first time at World D&D Game Day in 2008 and for the second time at GenConOz that same year. Since then I have been exclusively on the other side of the screen and have been running it every fortnight for my usual suspects.

Now on to the point at hand…

I heard the hype and I heard the criticism, I heard that it was basically a miniatures game with a role-playing element tacked on the end and I heard that it was the savior and the cure for cancer and below I will attempt through my own experience to give you an idea of its strengths and weaknesses.

The game can be faster, much, much faster but by the same token it can take a very long time to get simple things done. The combat system has been streamlined and the powers system means that each character has something interesting to do each turn but in my experience the new monster roles can leave a party with no real way to hurt a “Brute” who can more than injure them and is possessed of seemingly limitless hit points. It puts a real onus on the game master to read the stat blocks carefully and construct the encounters with care or mire the party in incredibly long combats.

The game has also taken on a somewhat generalist vibe, the classes still have roles within the party but there are elements of at least two roles hidden in each class I know a number of people personally who this does not sit well with, because their characters class is their “thing” and having a whole party who can do it just not as well is not sitting well with them.

For example our current group has a Paladin who is a warrior for his god who uses his sword arm to fight evil and his offhand to heal the sick with his lay on hands; this is the core of his character concept. However the party also contains a Cleric who is vastly more proficient at healing though not so great at combat and a Warlord who through here character concept and build is both a vastly better healer AND fighter. This has left our Paladin feeling superfluous.

This I think is probably common place. It will require either a fairly serious group discussion before game start about who wants to play what character and what will tread on their toes or a shift in the  way that character concepts are centered away from character abilities.

 Even the people who are highly critical of the game are giving credit where credit is due, the 4^th Edition manuals are vastly superior in their art, their layout and their indexing. I think Wizard’s of the Coast have listened to their feedback and made the changes that people have been asking them for in the last few years. Information is well laid out and easy to find in all the books I have purchased so far.

I won’t speak for anyone else but I really like what they’ve done with monsters or adversaries to be more accurate about it. The way that powers work (which I will cover next) has really given monsters some of the cool flavor the PCs have always had and its made each monster a force in its own right. My current group for example does not fear Orcs, they do however fear specific KINDS of Orcs, mostly Shaman and Berserkers.

The revolutionized encounter building system based on XP value rather than Challenge Rating means that encounters are quick to build and easy to calculate experience for however this can easily slip into the issue that I mentioned towards the beginning about encounters that look great on paper and butcher parties in reality.

  Powers, Powers, Powers. This is really where the debate is on 4^th Edition, there is a sizable argument that the introduction of powers to 4^th Edition and even arguably to the Book of Nine Swords for the 3.5 revision have made what was traditionally a paper and pen tabletop game far more like a pulp styled video game or more specifically like a number of popular MMOs.

It’s my opinion as a long time player of Fighters, Barbarians, Bards and Paladins that all that powers did was make the game as exciting and varied for everyone else as it was for Wizards and Clerics. It is a wonderful feeling to have more options in melee combat than sword or shield. I think the range of powers will be more satisfying with the expansion of the product library.

In regards to this I do take issue with the way that magic is being handled under the new powers system, and that issue is the almost complete lack of utility spells. There are utility powers every few levels but almost all of these are combat spells which do not deal damage. I am hoping that the recently released Arcane Power supplement or another future supplement will address this issue.

I suppose it’s worth touching at this stage on cost.  It’s no secret to the people who know me that I’m irresponsible with my gaming spending. I have as previous mentioned more than fifty 3.5 revision manuals in my bookcase that are no longer part of the supported rule system and I don’t for a moment regret that and neither do I regret the money that I paid for my 4^th edition manuals.

I paid $70AU a book for my 3^rd Edition and 3.5 revision manuals when they were released and was prepared to pay the same books so the price coming down to roughly $40AU per book was received with much joy at least in my circles. It has also made 4^th Edition players handbooks my most frequent birthday gift.

 I suppose following on from there I’ll finish with the controversial online tools. I became a D&D insider subscriber about the same time the closed Beta of the Character Builder launched. Now its worth mentioning that the price for the Insider subscription is really reasonable, if you pay American Dollars, if you decide you want to subscribe say… during an economic down turn, with Australian dollars. Then it costs you twice what the American numbers are. However I am very happy with the service I’ve bought, the monthly PDF issues of Dragon and Dungeon Magazine contain content I would have loved to own but never would have bought in magazine format and the Character Builder is a glorious piece of software.

I heard online recently that someone has already cracked it to get around the need to be a subscriber to update the Character Builder and to be honest that upsets me but I can understand their reasoning. It’s a service worth buying in my opinion.

There has been a lot of criticism about software promises that have not been realized on schedule and to that all I can say is that, is the IT industry to be honest and I for one am enjoying the game too much to notice. I will admit though that I am looking forward to the new features.

That’s all from me on this and I hope it helped.

Riley Out.