Well if it didn't cause cancer before..., ...it does now. Options

[Particle_Beam]

It really appears that what they've done is balanced the game by nerfing everyone to a pretty much even level of non-deadliness. That's kinda sad, but it looks like they're trying to take it in the direction of tournament play.

How do you mean that? Fighters not sucking anymore beyond level 8? Wizards and clerics not ruling the game at level 12 upwards, making every non-spellcasters obsolet safe for sidekicks, unless the gamemaster throws out the nerf-stick to the spellcaster players and reduces their combat capabilities, so that the players who are using mundane classes still get the illusion to contribute? Because Monte Cook himself admitted that the higher-level content of D&D 3.X wasn't tested at all. And they had purposefully built in some suck-choices, so that some people might learn "game mastery", like the Dodge Feat, or Toughness.
D&D 4th edition is nothing more than a continuation of D&D 3.whateveredition, with new focus on balancing. However, this time, D&D 4th edition admits to not being a "simulationist" game, which D&D 3.X pretended to be and failed in this regard.
Also, MMORPG-mechanics have been creeping into D&D 3.X since the year 2000. They seem to be popular for the absolute vast majority, so including them makes sense. If somebody wants to purposefully use suboptimal tactics and make it harder for everybody else in the game, you can use a basic attack, instead of your at-will, encounter or daily power. It's the same as in Shadowrun to purposefully throw yourself at the bullets, instead of dodging and going behinde cover.

[fistandantilus4....]

Having not read the game it's self, only the reviews posted here so far, take my opinion with a grian of salt:

It sounds as if they were trying to make a MMORPG into a P&PRPG. Everything scales up, all you do is increase stats, and the monsters increase in the same linear fashion all the way up. Not much matters out side of combat because that is what the game is specifically geared toward handling, and everything else is incidental. That may just be my narrowed view of it, but that's how it sounds so far.

[Aaron]

Though I did hear that as you level, you can replace your basic level 1 abilities... And the progression problem seems like it would probably be solved with further sourcebooks?

If that's the case, then the Wicked Wizard of the Pacific Northwest is lying about selling you a game. They're selling you part of a game and demanding more money for the rest of it.

[Particle_Beam]

What progression? Level 30 is the end, no further level ups anymore, because 3.X-epic level powers didn't scale well at all. Also, Wizards of the Coast always sold "splatbooks". Heck, you do remember Sword & Fist, the first martial supplemental for fighters and monks, which arrived shortly 2 or 3 months later, didn't you? Heck, that's even how Shadowrun operates. Here's the big book, and then there's supplemental with new nifty must-have-powers. That's how it has always been so.

[Larme]

How do you mean that? Fighters not sucking anymore beyond level 8? Wizards and clerics not ruling the game at level 12 upwards, making every non-spellcasters obsolet safe for sidekicks, unless the gamemaster throws out the nerf-stick to the spellcaster players and reduces their combat capabilities, so that the players who are using mundane classes still get the illusion to contribute? Because Monte Cook himself admitted that the higher-level content of D&D 3.X wasn't tested at all. And they had purposefully built in some suck-choices, so that some people might learn "game mastery", like the Dodge Feat, or Toughness.
D&D 4th edition is nothing more than a continuation of D&D 3.whateveredition, with new focus on balancing. However, this time, D&D 4th edition admits to not being a "simulationist" game, which D&D 3.X pretended to be and failed in this regard.
Also, MMORPG-mechanics have been creeping into D&D 3.X since the year 2000. They seem to be popular for the absolute vast majority, so including them makes sense. If somebody wants to purposefully use suboptimal tactics and make it harder for everybody else in the game, you can use a basic attack, instead of your at-will, encounter or daily power. It's the same as in Shadowrun to purposefully throw yourself at the bullets, instead of dodging and going behinde cover.

I dunno much about it either way, I'm just trying to introduce some sanity into a very one-sided debate. I'm glad to hear someone with more knowledge standing up for it.

I don't think anyone is pretending that D&D 4e was the same game as D&D 3e. Are people saying they want to be charged again for the same game? Cuz 3.5 was the same game, minorly tweaked, costing exactly as much as the old game... More of that does not sound appetizing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sleepy.gif)

[FrankTrollman]

Though I did hear that as you level, you can replace your basic level 1 abilities... And the progression problem seems like it would probably be solved with further sourcebooks?

Uh... not quite. You get certain specific slots, which eventually override specific earlier slots. You never get more than the 2 "at-will" abilities you start the game with. Indeed, as you get more expendable abilities the number of hit points that enemies have increases more proportionally, so those first level abilities are going to be used more and more often as you go up in level (weird but true). And while I think it very likely that they will bring in a massive damage upgrade to make that not the case* - the current rules do pretty much fall back to an "I attack, you attack" paradigm fairly quickly. Characters have two different basic attacks available to them, and everyone also has a couple of grapple-style attacks that they are automatically non-proficient with, but basically you just figure out which of your attacks is best against an enemy and use it many, many times.

*: Earlier writeups had the [W] notation that keeps getting added and multiplied into everything be a collection of damage die, attribute bonuses, half your level, feat mods, and weapon enhancement bonuses. And by earlier I mean February, so it seems likely that much if not all of the Monster Manual was written under that assumption. As opposed to the current rules where the only thing that gets multiplied and added is a single d8 while monsters are seriously walking into battle with over a thousand hit points.

-Frank

[Particle_Beam]

Yes, damn those epic-level solo monsters who need several rounds to beat them up, and god forgive any gamemaster who dares to bring in special environment that can make the difference in those battles. And every person who decides to be a teamplayer and try to synergize with somebody else be damned too.

[knasser]

Having not read the game it's self, only the reviews posted here so far, take my opinion with a grian of salt:

It sounds as if they were trying to make a MMORPG into a P&PRPG. Everything scales up, all you do is increase stats, and the monsters increase in the same linear fashion all the way up. Not much matters out side of combat because that is what the game is specifically geared toward handling, and everything else is incidental. That may just be my narrowed view of it, but that's how it sounds so far.

This is how it has sounded to me. I have seen some very good fluff material for it. There's a stronger back story to the setting involving the creators of the world (Primordials) being over thrown by the deities of the setting (much like the titans in Greek myth) and there are still living remnants of that war. And they have nice adjustment to the default setting in making it a little wilder and in adding two parallel planes to the setting - a shadow realm of death and a fey realm. But I'm not sure how much of this fluff is in the main books, I think it's mostly web supplements. And one of the main designers is quoted as saying that they deliberately dropped all the boring stuff such as skills you would use outside of combat.

I guess I might sound quite one-sided in all this, but in fact there is much about the new edition I really like. Certainly the presentation is marvellous (good word). But that only makes it more frustrating when there are flaws that might stop me running it.

[FrankTrollman]

Yes, damn those epic-level solo monsters who need several rounds to beat them up, and god forgive any gamemaster who dares to bring in special environment that can make the difference in those battles. And every person who decides to be a teamplayer and try to synergize with somebody else be damned too.

Where the hell did that come from dude? All I said was that sawing through over a thousand hit points in 20 point increments is mind bogglingly dull. The synergy between party members is pretty tepid in the 4th edition rules. The people who have the power to make their attack give the next attacker a +2 damage bonus have an attack that does slightly less damage than the people whose attack doesn't do that. Pretty much all of your choices are zero sum. While an attack that uses an Orb or a Holy Symbol has a lower to-hit bonus than an attack that uses a sword or a bow, it also targets a Reflex Defense, that happens to be slightly lower than the AC defense that the sword or bow targets. You have a to-hit bonus two points lower, but the target number is two points lower as well so it doesn't even matter.

I doubt you're going to find people who play Shadowrun coming in to bitch about different characters contributing to the team in different ways. That's kind of the point of Shadowrunner teams after all. But you will find a lot of people who will be frustrated by 4e's lack of difference between characters. A bow, a laser beam, a knife, or a fire bolt all do pretty much exactly the same thing. They all have pretty much exactly the same effect on the target, they all have pretty much exactly the same mechanics for use, and they are all pretty much useful in the same situations. The game skeleton is so bare in 4e that you can see the strings on virtually every aspect, every action, every choice, every result is preordained, interchangeable, and largely irrelevant.

I wanted to like 4e. I used to really like Rob Heinsoo's stuff for Feng Shui and Shadowfist. But 4e isn't a gme I can support. It's too late for it to be a financial failure, because preorders alone were guaranteed to make a profit based solely on the name. But I can hope that the oncoming sourcebooks fare as badly as Magic of Incarnum so that the movement towards deliberately breaking the 4th wall during gameplay that 4e is based upon can end and we can get on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition as quickly as possible with as little of the anti-immersive taint as possible and with a completely different design team.

-Frank

[Larme]

Turns out I have some friends who actually want to play, so I took a look...

First of all, what's this about no abilities working outside of combat? They're pretty explicit. You can use at-wills whenever you want, in or out of combat. You can also use encounter powers whenver you want, you just need a short rest before you use them again. And since one does "once per day" mean "once per day in combat?" Obviously, a lot of the powers only matter in combat, since they give a bonus to an attack. But the whole "can't use them outside of combat" think is, as far as I can tell, totally slanderous and ignorant.

Now, reading through the PHB, it still seems like D&D. They've monkeyed with the setting, and there are wacky new races, but it's the same game. And the system isn't even radically different. There are still skills and feats, the only major change that I see is the "powers" system. But I haven't read that far into it, so I'll reserve judgment on whether it's good or not.

Now as for what Frank says about epic level stuff... All I can ask is: are you sure? Because it sounds kinda dumb... Maybe you haven't factored magic weapons in? After all, in 3e, a fighter's longsword never goes beyond 1d8 + strength bonus before magic. But after you add magic, it can do 1d8 + 5 + 1d8 + 1d8 + 1d8 + strength. Is that actually gone?

[Particle_Beam]

Nah, it's still there. Many of the enchanted weapons dish out extra-damage in form of additional d6 when scoring a critical, depending on the enhancement modifier of the weapon. And of course, most of these weapons pack a daily power themselves, like the Flameweapons. The favourite weapon of all paladins, the Holy Avenger (now also in form of a hammer or a mace) gives you extra-damage when using a power with radiance damage. And there are epic and paragon feats and abilities that make you score a critical on a roll of 19-20, or 18-20. The criticals are rarer, but they still whallop a lot of damage. Power Attack also adds to damage output (at epic level, you either make +6 damage constantly with a one-handed weapon, or +9 with a two-handed weapon, but only suffer a -2 penalty to hit). And there's a lot more. Also, some powers can refresh all your encounter abilities, or even your dailies.
It's still the same. In D&D 3.X, you combined things to get your X-thousand dices plus 1 gajillion damage, and in D&D 4th edition, you still add this and that to create some super-attack that makes x-thousand dices plus half a gajillion damage, but with status effects.

[FrankTrollman]

First off: almost none of the abilities make any difference outside of combat. Even the so-called "utility" powers are almost exclusively related to combat rounds or battles. The ability to gain AC or temporary hit points until the end of next round or even until the end of the battle is both puzzling and irrelevant outside of combat. Attempting to find an ability that does anything at all in a non-combat scenario is frustrating.

This goes for monsters as well. Even a Succubus only has the ability to invoke a single target sanctuary effect and spend an action to try to dominate someone for one combat round. She can't actually influence people. Outside the combat arena her powers don't really do anything. She can run up and kiss you, and then you can't attack her. But if it's the middle of market day you weren't going to attack her anyway. You're totally free to shrug and go about your business, so long as you don't try to stab her in the face for the duration. And if she tries to command you with her one round dominate power (long enough for you to open a door on her behalf!), then the sanctuary effect ends and you are free to attack her again. And that's as out-of-combat as any monster in the entire book. It's a frickin Succubus.

Ad just to drive the point home: A Succubus has a lower Diplomacy modifier than a Voidsoul Specter or a Scissor Crownwing. Not because those things have any intention of talking to you, but because higher level monsters get bonuses to Diplomacy checks automatically which outshine the bonuses for being a silver tongued sex devil by a substantial margin.

Now as for what Frank says about epic level stuff... All I can ask is: are you sure? Because it sounds kinda dumb... Maybe you haven't factored magic weapons in? After all, in 3e, a fighter's longsword never goes beyond 1d8 + strength bonus before magic. But after you add magic, it can do 1d8 + 5 + 1d8 + 1d8 + 1d8 + strength. Is that actually gone?

When they gave the Paladin preview, they defined the notation in such a way that a smite listed as 2[W]+Charisma would do:

2d8 + 2*(Strength Mod) + 2*(Half Level) + 2*(Feat Bonuses) + 2*(Weapon Enhancement) + 2*(Secondary Item Mod) + (Charisma Mod)

And frankly they implied that you would get to add Half Level again because you got to add half level every time you added a Stat Mod. That was only a few months ago, when they were writing the Monster Manual. But what made it to the final copy is that the same notation means:

2d8 + (Charisma Mod) + (Feat Bonuses) + (Weapon Enhancement) + (Secondary Item Mod).

Now by 30th level, Charisma Mod can be as high as +10 (starts maxed at +5), Feat Bonuses can be +2, Weapon Enhancement and Secondary Items can be +6 each. So while a 1st level Paladin is using his basic smite and smiting for 2d8+7, a 30th level Paladin is using a 27th level smite and is smiting for 3d8+24. While enemy hit points have gone up more than seven times, player damage output has gone up 2.34 times. So not only does it take more total attacks to bring down an enemy, but the number of attacks which are left after you go through your encounter and daily powers is higher as well. So you end up spending more time fighting with your at-wills, which don't really change much (d8+7 -> 2d8+24, otherwise identical).

They told us a few months ago that when we fought a 1390 point Red Dragon that we would be smiting for ~100 damage. It turns out that we are smiting for 33 damage.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

I reserve judgement until I actually read the rules (my books haven't been shipped yet).

[Malicant]

It's awesome. Frank is just naysaying. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[nezumi]

Also, Wizards of the Coast always sold "splatbooks". Heck, you do remember Sword & Fist, the first martial supplemental for fighters and monks, which arrived shortly 2 or 3 months later, didn't you? Heck, that's even how Shadowrun operates. Here's the big book, and then there's supplemental with new nifty must-have-powers. That's how it has always been so.

I strongly disagree here.

A D&D game with only 1 splatbook strongly favors whatever class that splatbook affects. Try playing with the fighter book but nothing else. Whether the core game is playable without splat books I'll leave up to other people, however I would tend to say it becomes very difficult to play after around level 8.

Shadowrun is far more balanced. If you play with M&M but not MitS, it doesn't seriously change who is more powerful. The sammies might be more USEFUL, but rarely do they find themselves suddenly able to outpace the mages. The exception is SOTA books, which introduce serious new toys, but intentionally applies them across the board. It has new stuff for the mages AND the adepts AND the sams, so no one is really left behind.

You can also play entire campaigns using only the main book. The other books are fun, but in no way required. I say this because I'm currently on my second year of doing precisely that. The game is great, and I have as of yet to even feel the temptation introduce a single other book.

[Particle_Beam]

Of course cybered characters can never outpace magicians. Mages are considered to be better than mundane characters, which is why you pay some hefty points for being an awakened character (or have to chose it for the priority decisions). Aside from that, every additional supplemental will make your character better, either by introducing new features, or better items. You would be a moron to take a cyberarm from the basic book, instead from Augmentations, as an example. And that applies to SR 3rd edition too. Man and Machine had rules for better cyberware and re-introduced bioware, which aside from the hefty price was superior in many things to the stuff in the basic book. And don't even start on Magic in the Shadows. It had Initiation, for god' sake.
Everybody can play entire campaigns, even years, using only the main books in D&D too.

Supplementals have always been sold in addition, with options that make the book very desirable to its target demographic.

[nezumi]

I can't comment on SR4, however with SR3, the books really didn't bring much of anything that 'replaced' anything you had before (the big counter example being the Smartlink 2, but since mages would already regularly take the SL1, that did sort of apply to everyone). There are no better cyberlimbs in M&M, just more options. There aren't better VCRs, nor cyber eyes, nor just about anything else you care to mention, just more ways of doing it.

MitS is the singular exception because it allowed for initiation, which suddenly made mages (not adepts, who already had an option) tremendously more powerful. Debatably, Rigger 3 made riggers more powerful because they had better gear (admitedly, the vehicle list in the main book was pretty miserable - but riggers still regularly use the vehicles listed there).

D&D suffers from power creep - each new book makes the characters more powerful. Shadowrun suffers from rules creep - every new book allows you to do more stuff and applies more rules you can follow. But rules creep doesn't especially unbalance the game like power creep does.

[Particle_Beam]

Look, Shadowrun and D&D will always suffer from power creep. That's a given. Shadowrun 3rd edition did have supplementals to enhance and give new options for everybody, be it the mundane or the awakened. Shadowrun wasn't better, nor worse in that regard. Every pen-and-paper-RPG does that. Shadowrun 4th edition continues with that, and the new D&D 4th edition will do that too. It's only the decision of the gaming group if some supplementals are to be used or not. No supplemental is mandatory ever in any game, be it SR 1-4, or D&D from 197x to its latest incarnation in the year 2008. No Fanpro Nazi Squad, Catalyst Terror Marine Commando or Wizards of the Coast Secret Ninja Platoon will storm your house if you don't use the latest supplemental.
But they're produced with power creep to make people oogle for them. Be it the damage compensator or however it is called, the newest guide to create your superpowerful ally spirit and gain new uberinitiate powers, vehicle mods to make your moped into a tank-buster, or german crap like the urban combat weapon series, there are new things added in to make as many people buy it as possible.

That's always been so, and will remain so.

[FrankTrollman]

A D&D game with only 1 splatbook strongly favors whatever class that splatbook affects. Try playing with the fighter book but nothing else.

Since historically Fighters have been hobos and vagabonds contrasted with spellcasters, that's not even a problem. What are you going to do with Sword & Fist or Complete Warrior that is going to overshadow a Conjurer? A Wizard can planar bind an army of efreeti and demons and give himself wishes in the core books. The twinkiest Frenzied Berserker you can foist on the world is impressive from time to time, but he's not seriously playing the same game as a Wizard who puts even have an effort into mastering time and space.

That is something about 4e that I do appreciate. Fighters are no longer left hopelessly in the dust. Unfortunately it happens at the cost of there not being anything worth driving to. Basically everyone sits back where they would be left in the dust if anyone could do anything meaningful. Only they can't, so n one is left behind. The ultimate aspect of being a "Demigod" is seriously that when you get to the "grind grind grind" stage of high level combats, that you can use one of your encounter powers over and over again instead of one of your at-wills. That means that your attacks do 2d8 extra points of damage. That's it. That's the 30th level grand master crowning achievement of Demigodhood for a Fighter. Or anyone else really.

4e succeeds in making a system where things are reasonably balanced. Unfortunately it does so at the cost of having characters and monsters not really do anything.
4e succeeds in having monsters that play differently while still being fast to integrate into the game, quick and easy for a DM to understand and play. Unfortunately it does so at the cost of having monsters be essentially not customizable. The Kuo-Toa Spearman and the Kuo-Toa Harpooner play and feel differently. But if you wanted to make a more powerful Kuo-Toa Spearman or a Kuo-Toa Swordsman, you are basically on your own.

And the art is bad. Like really atrociously bad. Like I don't even feel as bad about the cover of Augmentation bad.

-Frank

[Drogos]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) OMFG, they took a MMORPG and made a PnP game out of it. What the fuck were they thinking??? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

I mean I realize that they are trying to tap into the massive players of the online games, but really...I just got nothing i can say to WotC shear lunacy in their attempt. I hope it fails...MISERABLY so that it illustrates to them that hey, gamers are not the lowest common denominator, especially the ones willing to fork out $45 for a BOOK. I guess they thought, "Hey there's this COMPUTER GAME that has a lot of players and we'd liek them to play our game and spend a lot of money to play it. Lets make the two similar so that we can appeal to the market." Obviously, they missed their respective market. While many gamers also play MMORPGs, I don't know a single one who would after a PnP session sit back and say, "Man, I wish we had done some more grinding so I could get to level 28 this session...hmm, you got time to run my grind fest. I'll go find some kobolds." I'm really glad I'm not bothering to spend my money on this drek. I'll stick to Gurps and the Hero system, tyvm, cause I just can't bring myself to support Wizards anymore.

[Particle_Beam]

Nah, D&D 4th edition is more like Magic The Gathering, with dices. And all your hopes for D&D 4th edition to fail are already crushed. According to Mike Mearls, one of its lead designers, D&D 4th edition has more pre-orders than D&D 3.0 and 3.5 together ever had together.

Some people must have really no good opinion about their buddy who takes the job of the gamemaster today. To even suggest that he's going to force the people to grind the game upwards like in a MMORPG...
D&D 3.X probably successfully conditoned players to think that a gamemaster is nothing more than an inferior computer subjective to the whims of everybody else on the gametable. Either that, or Illithids are sucking the brains away from game nerds. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/pumpkin.gif)

[darthmord]

I do have to question the damage output example given by Frank.

Did you account for multiple attacks by the higher level Warrior? I'm fairly certain they did NOT do away with that mechanic.

So while per swing damage may have only gone up by a little over 2x, through multiple attacks, you get the other 3x-4x which amounts to the same effective Time to Kill metric.

Honestly, I prefer my D&D with pieces from 2nd Edition through 3rd Edition. 3rd made several changes that once implemented were pretty dang good and encouraged people to play out of the box. Multi-class was no longer a penalty as doing so under 2nd Edition was highly restricted by race and race specific combos. Want an Elf Cleric/Mage? Better hope your DM will house rule it so you can. Because having an Elf Cleric/Mage was apparently unbalancing... yet a Half-Elf Cleric/Mage was perfectly fine.

Unified metrics were another improvement. Everything adds up to a number based on d20. No more THAC0 & -X armor classes.

Unified level advancement was another improvement. That also helped the multi-class angle too. Now you don't have to worry about whether the adventure is too hard for some or too easy for others simply by virtue of levels / classes.

Is it perfect? No. There are still rough spots. I've yet to find a game that is perfect. If there was such a beast, I would think we'd all be playing it.

As for SR, I honestly prefer 2nd Edition with a few choice pieces borrowed from SR3 & SR4. SR3 was just ehh overall IMO. SR4... too simplistic and it copies & pastes too much from previous editions without much of the explanatory text. Does that make SR3 & SR4 bad games? No, not just as polished as I would prefer.

Therein lies the crux of the arguement... It's all about opinion. My opinion of SR3 & 4 is less than that of my opinion of SR2. But does that make my opinion right or the top dog? No. It's my opinion. Because of that, it doesn't have to be right or wrong for anyone else.

We should really keep that in mind regarding our own opinions. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean it is right or wrong. It's just an opinion.

[FrankTrollman]

Important note: Mike Mearls isn't a lead designer on 4e and never has been. The lead designers are Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt. Mike Mearls is a contributing designer for 4e. If he has ever claimed to be a lead designer on 4e, that is an outright lie. You can check the credits of the book.

Now, if he has been crowing about how preorders for 4e were bigger than for 3e + 3.5, then that's probably true. It doesn't actually mean very much because 3rd edition didn't market itself on preorders particularly. 4e has a pre-order package set up with Amazon and 3e didn't. That being said, the idea that an edition, any edition of Dungeons and Dragons could be a "failure" at this point is laughable. The core books simply cannot fail to make money. They could be FATAL and they would still make money because there's enough name recognition that people will go buy at least the first books. It's like how people went to see Matrix 2 or Phantom Menace. Those movies had enough brand loyalty built up that it literally didn't matter what they were, money was going to be made.

Whether 4e is judged successful or not will depend not on whether it makes its investment back - it definitely will and doubtless already has. It will be judged successful by how well it stays in the market. The sales of source material and continued sales of the core book will tell marketing analysts whether the direction was a good one based on how well the product performs against the base expectations of a new D&D edition. The faster sales of new books fall to Dragons of Eberron levels, the less 5e will resemble the current offering. The longer it takes for interest in new books to look like Magic of Incarnum, the more similar 5e will be to 4e.

It's an interesting paradigm. If 4e has good sustainment in the market, 5e will take longer to arrive and be more similar to 4e. If 4e sales drop fast after the initial push, then 5e will be here sooner and will be a more radical departure. The more work the new design team has to do, the less time they will have to do it.

---

Now while the early 4e marketing stuff was downright offensive and to my mind incredibly poorly done (getting caught sneaking shills onto message boards, putting out rants about how D&D wasn't fun, etc.), the latest stuff where they invite people with nerd cred over to their house and play D&D with them with some pizza and Mountain Dew and just let those people talk about how they had fun - that's genius. So of course they are getting a lot of distribution right now. I would bet $10 that the leaker of the .pdfs was in fact a WotC staffer, because someone out there finally understands that .pdf piracy drives game book sales in the same way as it drives CD sales. The amount of buzz they are generating by having people actually able to get their grubby paws on the new edition is staggering. Whether people like it or not, they are still thinking and talking about it, and that drives sales from a preorder standpoint.

I do have to question the damage output example given by Frank.

Did you account for multiple attacks by the higher level Warrior? I'm fairly certain they did NOT do away with that mechanic.

Well, you're wrong. They got rid of that mechanic. (Essentially) all attacks are Standard Actions now. You don't get iterative attacks under any circumstances. People don't even have BABs any more.

[quote]

-Frank

[Malicant]

4e succeeds in making a system where things are reasonably balanced. Unfortunately it does so at the cost of having characters and monsters not really do anything.

What does that even mean?

4e succeeds in having monsters that play differently while still being fast to integrate into the game, quick and easy for a DM to understand and play. Unfortunately it does so at the cost of having monsters be essentially not customizable. The Kuo-Toa Spearman and the Kuo-Toa Harpooner play and feel differently. But if you wanted to make a more powerful Kuo-Toa Spearman or a Kuo-Toa Swordsman, you are basically on your own.

Wrong. There is a section in the DMG detailing how to build your own monsters and how to decrease or increase the powerlevel of existing monsters.

And the art is bad. Like really atrociously bad. Like I don't even feel as bad about the cover of Augmentation bad.

I really don't know why people keep repeating that. It is way better than anything I have seen so far in any game. Well, oWoD Mage and nWod Werewolf are better.

[Drogos]

Nah, D&D 4th edition is more like Magic The Gathering, with dices. And all your hopes for D&D 4th edition to fail are already crushed. According to Mike Mearls, one of its lead designers, D&D 4th edition has more pre-orders than D&D 3.0 and 3.5 together ever had together.

Some people must have really no good opinion about their buddy who takes the job of the gamemaster today. To even suggest that he's going to force the people to grind the game upwards like in a MMORPG...
D&D 3.X probably successfully conditoned players to think that a gamemaster is nothing more than an inferior computer subjective to the whims of everybody else on the gametable. Either that, or Illithids are sucking the brains away from game nerds. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/pumpkin.gif)

From all the sources, some opinions I respect and others I know nothing about, I have come to the conclusions I have. And no, the gamemaster is not IMO some computer to generate my encounters. But when you have few to no rules for social interactions (a complaint of Frank's I've yet to see anyone address, so I must assume it is true...adding the fact that I heard this exact complaint from other gamers) outside of combat, the interface of the game devolves. A system is supposed to be designed to handle things in the rules more than just GM fiat. Yes, I can sit and BS my GM into thinking that such and such NPC should do X for me, when Y is SOOOO much better for the NPC, but in the end when it is so overwhelmingly biased the call for a roll is made. This roll is generally aided by my attempts to role-play my character and is based on points I assigned to specific skills, not some arbitrary rating dependant on the number of hit die I possess. Since 4th sounds like all it is based on level (such is the problem with a class based game), all you will be doing is looking to get to the next plateau so that you can be better at your shtick. And while DnD has always been plagued somewhat by this problem, at least in 3.0 and 3.5 (the version I am most familiar with) there was a system in place for this exact occurrence. As far as I recall, 2nd edition was quite similar (I avoided it because THAC0 confused the crap out of me). I realize that DnD is a fantasy adventure role-playing system. I like it and appreciate it for that aspect. But you must have the filler to go with it. Otherwise all you are doing is running from one tavern to the next until finding the trigger for the next dungeon that you delve into and decimate the inhabitants. That's a fuckin MMO, and I can do without that experience at my table.

And preorders do not, and have never for any PnP game made up the bulk of sales, so using that as a benchmark for success is inaccurate. PnP games are not video games and rely on sales for more than just the opening weekend. A lot of pre orders could be due to the enraging d20 hate that many people feel over 3.0 and 3.5. It may just be that their idea worked too. Wizards is not a stupid company after all and they make sure to make money off of their licenses.
::EDIT:: Frank is absolutely right, this core book will make money. The rest of the line shall have to wait and see ::EDIT::

Of course, I'll be just as satisfied if I'm completely wrong and if 4th edition saves DnD like SR4 breathed new life into SR. If so, great, wonderful, stupendous. Either way, I'll be happy I spent my $45 on SR stuff instead of MMODnD.