Now, just a few months ago, my roommates began playing Dungeons and dragons. They were making new characters, and I was astounded that the character sheets were only two pages, with the second one not even needed. They said they were playing 4e, and that it was much different than 3.5e.

And boy where they right. Creating a character only took like half an hour, and we were playing that same night after I thumbed through the player’s guide.

You can give it low reviews for it all you want, but for a new player like me, 4e is a life saver. 3.5e has so many rules and technicalities and other stuff to thumb through, and if that’s what you want, well then more power to you! For newbies, 4e is the way to go. I’m having loads of fun, and everything else I wanted to know was supplemented with Player’s Handbook 2.

My Kobold Rogue is a heck of a lot more fun in 4e than he was in 3.5e.

I’m a DnD newb who’s attempted 3.5e, and I find 4e to be just great.

Side note, dripping with irony that your final verdict is a score of 3.5

I was thinking of getting the books and your comments have been very informative. Thank you.

1-The elimination of the Alignment system.

Although some would see this a straight-jacket, I disagree. It was a crucial element to roleplaying. From nine, we have five, leaving mesh and overlay, which confuses and irks many, including those in my gaming group.

2-”Powers” and the elimination of Vancian Magic.

The implementation of powers in 4th edition is foolish and contrived. It marginalizes the distinct features of classes, and renders them all the same; just swap fighter with wizard, and your damage output will be the same! Spellcasters are now delegated to “DPS” machines, having to resort to rituals that an equivalent level 3.x spell caster could blow out of the water.

3-The elimination of traditional cosmologies, and gods.

Where is Limbo? Where is my Clock Work Nirvana? Gehnna? Hades? Nowhere to be found. 30+ years of development, eschewed in favor of a puerile system that makes the Planes less wondrous, and more “Cookie Cutter”.

Where is Heironeous? Where is Nerull? Obad-Hai? Hell, what about Garl Glittergold? Looks likes the Halflings don’t get a racial deity…..

Eliminating so many of the “Traditional gods” Seems pointless and unneeded.

3- The reintroduction of former Dungeons and Dragons Modules.

I ran a traditional Tomb of Horrors, using Mr.Gygax’s no saving throw rules for Acererak, and my party had a blast(Gold more then compensated), but with 4th edition turning it’s back on “Save or Die”, traditional adventures(and enemies for that matter), become boring and unengaging. I mean really, I want my Acererak to rip your soul out, and make my pcs watch their souls burn in his teeth. I want my Great Green Devil to be a ruthless black hole. These reintroductions marginalize the original visions of this games creator.

The author of this article presents several other valid reasons, which only strengthen my resolve.

Congratulations, Wizards. Your plan of buying out TSR, and destroying the game so people can buy your shitty card games is going swimmingly.

Easy multiclassing.
Variable skills across types allowing for greater customisation.
Feats, while remaining in 4e, are lessened, where before they had more impact.
3E did a huge amount to loosen the constrictions of class/level.
4E has put them back in. That’s a knock-back for RP focus.

4E, on the other hand, doesn’t put the restictions or ‘Get out’ spells that 3.xE does. Since we switched to 4E 2 years ago my players have said that they do more actual role-playing and not deciding on what spells they can use in a given situation. PAthfinder doesn’t fix this problem either.

Now, I’m not saying that 4E is the messiah of RPGs, but neither was 3.x, but its mine and my players opinion that 4E suits us so much better than 3.x

Sure, you can hit the Internet… Amazon, eBay, whatever, and get stuff thatmis out of print – but have you seen what Arcana Evolved books (for example) are going for these days?

And the changes to the FR even worst.

I am sticking with 3.5

The problem with 4.0 isn’t that the rules specifically hinder RP, it’s that they encourage metagaming, character speccing, and narrow down the ability for a player to customize their character. And THAT hinders role playing. It encourages a hack and slash game style. I mean come on… Dragonkin as a base race? What the hell? That is completely ridiculous. 4th edition appeals to power gamers, and that’s how it was designed. Now of course the DM doesn’t have to play it that way, but the same is true of 3.5. The difference is, if you want to focus more on a RP, story driven game, 3.5 gives you more leeway and creates a simple way for you to create just about anything you want for both the players and the DM.

Now I’ll admit, I haven’t played 4th edition yet, and I was really excited about it at first when I originally heard about it. Then I read the player’s handbook… and couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Just stop and read the descriptions of the powers. They are so corny and ridiculous, and so obviously trying to appeal to power gamers. “Cleave of Fear: With a mighty swing of your weapon, and a blood curdling roar, you strike fear into the hearts of your opponent… right before you cut it out!”
Yes, that’s made up and a slight exaggeration, but the point remains.

4th edition seeks to over power characters and make them into invincible gods. Leveling is way too similar to an MMORPG. Instead of classes being specializations as they should, each class is pretty independent and can do most things pretty well.

3.5 you start as a slightly more powerful than average peasant, and that’s how it should be. You earn your power. You don’t get to be a hero at level 1, you become a hero.

Now if you like hack and slash, you like the power gaming, and you like 4th edition, more power to you. You’re welcome to enjoy whatever you want. And yeah, it is possible to combine a game specialized towards hack and slash with a more in depth story telling style, but why use an edition meant for hack and slash for a in-depth story RP, when you could just use an edition made to balance out all styles of play?

A lot of creativity is present in this game. The players got to play how they wanted too without getting out of hand or munchkins because the rules were loose enough for us to do what we wanted, not some stupid power cards that limited us in our actions. Did we use every rule…no.

That was the best part, we just played the game for fun. And it was a lot of fun. Almost zero time was spent bickering over rules because they were open enough for whatever you wanted to interpret. Good by powergaming hello roleplaying.

Rules killed the game. Do yourself a favour and play a game where you don’t know all the rules. As long as the GM keeps the same physics in his/her world who cares how balanced they are as long as everyone understands it is consistent. Like a good novel internal consistency is more important than perfect physics. Its alos a lot more fun when tactics are from your mind than from minor , move , standard of D&D 4 E

The whole point of buying the game is to have a solid base to work with! If it’s all up to the DM, they why not use a full homebrew system?

If I buy a game, I want it to work from day one. I may do some minor changes here and there, to cater to specific players or groups, but the base of the system should hold on its own.

That said, “D&D” 4th edition fails because it’s no longer a RPG system. It’s a strategy/wargame system. Roleplaying is possible, yes, just like it is possible in Monopoly, if I want.

“D&D” 4th edition does NOT promote role playing. If anything, it limits it, by putting emphasis on power gaming and slaying (ironically, if you read the description for “Power Gamer” and “Slayer” in the DMG, those are EXACTLY the type of players this edition caters to).

It’s one thing to have the OPTION to play a dungeon-crawl, hack n slash, game. It’s another completely when the game encourages it.

Long time fans of roleplaying know better, and that’s why they complaint, but the problem is all the new players who come into this thinking “wow, so this is the pure roleplaying people were telling me about?” No, it isn’t.

I’m not afraid of change and, in fact, welcome it. I’ve started with Classical D&D (red box) and went through all the editions and settings ever made by TSR and WotC. Never had a problem. Only minor disagreements that were simple to fix with home rules – but that’s something that comes with the territory. 4th edition, however, is simply a disaster.

I tried. I swear I tried to appreciate this edition. I tried it back in 2008, and have kept trying since then. We’re almost in 2011, and I give up. It’s a disaster, pure and simple.

I honestly hope WotC goes bankrupt (like TSR did) and someone else gets the rights to the D&D license. Even if no one does, and D&D dies, that’s still better than to continue down the path WotC is taking.

Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax are gone. Monte Cook and Skip Williams are also gone (in a different way, but still…). What we have now is James Wyatt and a bunch of other idiots who have no idea how to design a game (or even play one, judging by the stupid “pro” tips scattered around the books).

There’s a slight glimmer of hope that 5th edition may be a turn BACK to basics, but I seriously doubt it.

Regardless, complaining in comments or forum posts is pointless. The only voice WotC listens to is the one coming from people’s wallets. So, if you’re reading this, do yourself, and the world of RPGs, a favor: don’t ever buy anything related to D&D again (you can easily find any of their books for free online anyway, if you know where to look).

They won’t get a cent from me.

What are you talking about. This is a review. The point of a review isn’t to get people to try something. Its to give a critique of the product so they can establish a rational on weather to buy a product or not on peoples account of the products.

If you don’t like the reviews you are entitled to your own review. That said telling people not to whine is whats wrong with the 4E people.”waah go play your 1,2,3X” The point isn’t to whine about old systems either.
People want to know if they should buy this product. Some people don’t have access to large gaming communities and generally have only their close friends they have coaxed into playing.

Especially if in a rural setting. So they need to be informed about the pros and cons of the new system.
I don’t have 100 bucks to blow on the core books so I was lucky our local game store had 4E sessions on wednesdays.

I played for 3 months while the owner pushed me to buy into it. Game store owners need people to like this. Its good for their sales. But it never fit very well.

A lot of the complaints are the same ones I heard from around the table. The Store owner said everyone loved it. Not from some of the grumbles outside of the store.

Love for the combat system at first level but not so much at level 6. If you have to generate a character at level 6 it is a big pain. Worse than a lot of other systems. For synergy reasons. Like someone else mentioned about stacking bonuses. Too much time on combat not enough on Role playing.

To each their own. I just want people who come across this article to know what they are going to experience. For me, it was not going to be worth forking out money on this tripe.

So I don’t think letting people know ahead of time what this is like is whining as you imply. Some of us have genuine reservations about the new system. At least if they do try it they can’t say they didnt get a warning ahead of time.

Less loss selling the books on EBay that way. Better off trying Savage Worlds or Gurps than wasting your money on something that doesn’t fit your usage of DnD.

Before 4th ed…”Charging I draw my mace while rolling under the table to swing at her ankle…I don’t want to kill her just incapacitate her”
” OK make an acro check and roll a d20 +1 to see if you hit with the surprise maneuver. If you hit I’ll see if she stumbles, you can try to grapple her at that point. Good thing you took off your chainmail before going to the tavern, thats a hard maneuver you would have had penalties”

Now. “I use guilding strike so she takes a -2 penalty to a def…how do I knock her out or make her stumble? What about a bonus?”
“well what does your power say? does it say knockout opponent or allow a bonus other than a -2 to a def?…No well roll the d20 to see if you hit. You took off your chainmail…good for you, now roll.”

If you or your DM can’t figure out a way to do exactly that in 4e, then you have a problem:

Player:…”Charging I draw my mace while rolling under the table to swing at her ankle…I don’t want to kill her just incapacitate her”

DM:” OK make an acrobatics check – good thing you took off that chainmail before going to the tavern, thats a hard maneuver – you would have had penalties. Now, make a melee basic attack against her with your mace. If you hit, deal 2 damage (you are still probably going to break her ankle – it is a mace, afterall), and knock her prone. You can try to make a grab at that point.”

See, simple as pie. At-Will Powers are meant for when you’re in the middle of an open field facing one last enemy and you have no odd, creative options. So, instead of just swinging your sword at him time and again, you decide you want to take a huge swing – put everything into the attack and to hell with your defenses. Instead of the DM having to come up with arbitrary bonuses to attack and damage and penalties to defenses, you have something that states what those changes would look like. And just because the power gives a description of what the attack could look like, doesn’t mean it has to look like that – making your own descriptions is part of the D&D creativity of getting attached to your own character, and if I’m not mistaken the PHB even states that you should feel free to rename and redescribe any attack you use to fit your character.

I realize this has been a bit of a rant, and I’m sorry, but I’m sick of people trashing something that’s different from what you think the ideal is. Newsflash, we’ve all got different views of the ideal, and you’re giving people who haven’t even tried it yet preconceived notions that could keep them away from something they might truly enjoy. I don’t care if you don’t like it – WotC isn’t preventing you from playing 1, 2, 3, 3.5, Pathfinder, etc., and they aren’t sending ninjas to destroy your old books. I’m just asking that you at least give the game a reasonable shot, or don’t whine about it.