As the threads title and description states, this is a thread purely for positive and positively constructive discussion about the new 4e D&D. PLease keep the negativity, negative non-constructive criticism, and flat out WotC Bashing in another thread (There's a couple around here).

I'm serious. Behave.

Ok, that out of the way, for those picking the books (or the *cough* PDF's) up and reading through them, what's your read on it so far?

I picked up Keep on the Shadowfell last week to check out the basics. It's a nice, if straightforward adventure. Makes for a decent introductory adventure. It was a tad pricey though. And the rules overview was a bit light. I've been a gamer long enough that I figured everything out easy enough, but a newb would have a hard time tracking some of it.

But, I was interested enough to go out and pick up the core books today. While I played some 3 and 3.5, I never bought any of the books. I was an old school fan, mostly because of nostalgia, but I thought if they were gonna redo the game, they needed to start over fresh and build from the ground up. 3rd didn't do that. 4th does, which I think is a good thing.

I'm still just skimming the PHB, and haven't even cracked the GMG or MM, so I can;t comment too much yet, but I like what I see so far. Mechanically, it borrows a bit from CCG and MMO mechanics and design theory, but to me, this isn't a bad thing. There were what, a couple million copies of 3rd ed sold? Meanwhile, WoW has 10 million current, active subscribers. Even if you assume that half of those are dummy accounts (Gold farmers and "mule" accounts for the real addicts), that's still more than double the number of poeple who bought 3rd Ed. And that doesn't even count in the probably several million inactive accounts from people who've dropped the game over the years.

Likewise, there are probably more kids that have played Magic, Pokemon, YuGiOh, and other CCGs than have played D&D and other RPGs.

So to me, this says that WotC's playing it smart. You put in some familiar aspects, and it makes the game more accessible to folks who might come into the RPG from another medium. Consoles and WoW are really opening up the gaming market some, and hopefully we'll get a little trickle of new players from it.

Ok, that was a bit of a side ramble, but something that's been on my mind since I first started seeing "reviews" of the game and when I started looking the game over myself.

Anyways, I'll post more later once I've had the chance to digest some of it a bit more. But so far, I think it's a positive step forward for the game.

Bull

One thing that irks me a little bit is that there isn't some kind of minion-template that you could put upon any monster. A little bit sad that there isn't a possibility to "minionize" every monster with little work, the same as you can turn monsters into elites and even solos by adding simple templates to them.

Also, the number of At-will powers are quite limited. Every player character race can only use two (humans get to use three from mostly four), and there aren't that many at-will powers to chose from. Hopefully, the supplemental books will add some more for that. It would have been cool if there were higher-level at-will powers to replace your old at-wills with.

And the rules-description of some power might perhaps need some more precise wordings, as for example in the test-battle, where a group of level 30-fellas dropped the 1450-hit points-tarasque, people were wondering if the beast really might have been stunned by some warlock daily power.

Feats aren't that much super-important anymore (they only add some small and nice advantages, but that's all), however, if you want to take them, you still have to pre-plan your character statwise for the prerequisites. Although, you had to do that too in D&D 3.X, so not a big deal.

But those are only minor nit-picks. The rest is mechanically sound and really works good. BAB and skill points have been replaced by an automatic half-level bonus, making it absolutely unncessary to waste time thinking how to distribute your limited skill-points. Although a nice idea, 3rd edition proves that class-and-level-based games aren't that good for alloting skill-points, because they become way too valuable ressources at especially higher-level games.

I do hope that the current game designers really didn't intentionally put in some turkey-feats and powers like they did back then in 3rd edition (I'm looking at you, dodge, skill focus and toughness).
Also, character creation is much much faster, especially if you want to start a higher-level game. The one table in the DMG will help creating your super-level-hero in no time, something which could have taken many more hours in 3rd edition if you used spell-caster classes... Or one of those newer and better melee-classes from Tome of Battle.

All in all, a good pen&paper-RPG that will surely become successfull.

Ok, read a bit more over lunch. Still not nearly enough, but...

I was iffy on the new races at first, but I'm digging them a bit more now. Tieflings still bug me, just for that "oo! Cool!" factor, but I'm liking the Dragonborn, and I like the new Fey race once I realized they're basically High Elves to the Elves "Wood Elves".

Looking through the DMG a bit, I like the new Ritual stuff. It's kinda cool, and opens up some magic and other stuff as a more generally available ability.

I was highly amused by the "Player Types" break down, as well as the "how to deal with..." sections of it. This is something that's kind of necessary for a GM, but it's something no major game has really tackled in print before. It's simplified and by no means all encompassing, but it's pretty neat (and amusing) to say the least.,

I was moderately amused (and disturbed) by the Experience Awards section, especially when they broke down an average "Advancement Timeline" and said that with average play and XP awards, at 4-5 hours a week playing once a week, the average party would hit 30trh level in a year and a half. I mean, Damn. That's some seriously fast progression there It's easy enough to tweak and what not, but coming from old school D&D, I had characters that hadn't broken level 10 in a couple years of regular play.

This isn;t really good or bad, IMO, just something that would take a bit of adjustment. Plus, you can tweak the XP awards as necessary (And the book even talks about doing this to slow down advancement).

I'm at the point now where I really need to sit down, make a couple characters, and get a couple friends together to try out a game.

Bull

For those of us without the books yet (who are still in the "I'm certain I'm undecided" camp about the whole edition), does anyone with a positive spin want to give a quick breakdown on character creation?

Same old stats? Same 3d6 (or 4d6 and drop)? I heard you no longer roll for hit points (which are triple digit numbers, anyways, right?)? What races are there? For those of us who were quite comfortable in 2nd and 3.x editions, what is there in this one that'll still feel like home?

I will honestly have to sit down and actually work up a character before I can really comment on the changes. A lot looks the same, some looks a lot different. More on that when I get home from work, I think.



Yes



4d6/drop or a point allocation system. They seem to recommend point allocation, and even have a small chart with various stat spreads already worked out.



Hehe, not quite. But yeah, each class gets a fixed number, plus your constitution stat, to start. Most classes look like they get between 12-15 + Con to start, and then they get a flat rate per level, rather than a random result.



Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human, Tiefling, Dragonborn (Basically Draconians with a "Noble Heritage" and a per encounter minor breath weapon), a Fey race called the... Eladin? Something like that. Basically, another race of Elves. High Elves to the standard "Wood" Elves. I think that's it.



Plenty. It resmbles D&D a lot, actually. More than I figured it would. I suspect it will still mostly feel like D&D (More 3.5 than 1st/2nd). There's a lot of changes, some good, some bad, but.. It's still D&D at the end of the day.

Bull

What every ones view on the lack on none combat stuff. And what if any races have been dropped. I wont by any 4e stuff as SR and 3.5 are what i play and theres many a reason for that.

Positive: races haven't been "dropped" exactly. The Gnome and the Goblin and the Bugbear are all in the game, you can even play them with DM agreement. It sounds weird to have Gnomes be playable with DM agreement only, but really all races and classes are like that anyway so it's not as big a deal as you'd think. Certianly it would never even occur to me to run a game where dragonborn even existed, so whatever.

Caveat: None of the races outside the Humans, Night Elves, Blood Elves, Half Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Draconians, and Draenei are complete. All the races have roughly balanced stat modifiers (though for weirdly game mechanical reasons you happen to suck if you get a Str/Con bonus, a Dex/Int bonus, or a Wis/Cha bonus), all the races have a set of special feats that they can (and usually will) take, and all the races have a roughly balanced set of abilities. Except that the races other than the "standard" 8 have a short power list and no feats. So despite having writeups that you could nominally play, they aren't really quite playable out of the box.

So close, but so far. They finally just knuckled down and wrote a playable gnoll, a playable kobold, a playable minotaur and so on and so forth, but they didn't actually finish any of them.

-Frank

From what I've read doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I normally run combat as a part of the adventer not just all of it use nonecombat skills a lot and such. As 4th is a combat fest from all Ive seen and read it will not be any fun for most of my group Ned the munchkin might like it but screw him. So ill stick with 3.5

Don't think of them as "unplayable," think of them as "unlockable," except that instead of playing the game, you wait a while and then pay money.

On the positive side, I'm hoping that the game satisfies my wargame cravings more than it disappoints my inner role-player. Although I would find it ironic if it turns out that Classic BattleTech ends up having more role-playing crunch than D&D 4e.

Amazingly enough I found out that people still use Usenet today. He gets kinda philisophical in it but it's still an interesting article

4E and the Wii

In it he compares 3.X to the PS3 and 4E to the Wii. He suggests that the two systems are both excellent games but that 4E will be more successful because it is more accessible.

To sum up my take on it, he suggests that while there is a segment of gamers who enjoy deeply complex rule systems that there has been a trend in recent years towards 'simpler' games. As games evolved through the 90's there was a trend towards trying to find a rule for everything. This brought us the Skills and Powers books of 2nd ed, Shadowrun 3, Gurps, the infamous Palladium (god knows what edition) and yes third edition. Since the release of 3.5 however the trend has reversed across the gamer community. The two best examples of this in my mind are "Castles and Crusades" and "True20" though Shadowrun 4 fits the bill too. While the two systems appeal to widely different audiences, C&C is seen as 'old school' while T20 is the indy rock band both are very simple, intuitive, straight forward systems. I think 4E hopes to appeal to both, with the core mechanic of "Roll a D20 and seen what happens" staying the same but with a more progressive framework built around it.

A poster on ENworld said it quite well IMO
Personally I've been entranced by the simpler systems and I'm a wargamer, chits on hexes style. I enjoy wargaming because it is very intense, detail oriented mental gymnastics where you need to understand the workings of the system to do well. I know exactly one other person who I have this in common with. I need more than that for a D&D game. Besides I never got into the D&D system since the actual 'rules' of most wargames are fairly simple too, just implementing them is tough. I game with my sister who after 8 years still needs help doing characters, along side a father of 4. Simpler systems let us focus on what our characters are doing, not how they are doing it.

It's natural for D&D to want to get on this trend. After all it's working.

3.5 was never complex for me. I am also a wargamer but I view both RPGs and wargames differently. Most wargames you need the moddles and such its all part of it what make it fun but with RPGs you can run an encounter over lunch (i have done) this with only some dice a pencil and some paper. Some time with a lack of rule you can get into abusive sitiuations or have a shitty Gm who is not in the book so no. Even if a rule no one really uses is in the book at least you can use it any where.

They dropped half-orcs. Outright. Mikey is not pleased.

Still, seems playable so far. I need to try it out first before I can say "tea" or "nay." Skills are quite simplified. Every skill is available. If you're proficient you get a +5 bonus to the roll. Add the relevant attribute modifier, proficiency bonus and half your level rounded down. Voiala. Instant skill check.

The major change at a glance is how healing works. Every class gets a set amount of "healing surges." A healing surge heals you of 1/4 your maximum hit point total. You can use as many as you like while resting, one during combat. Certain class powers can make more available during combat. That'll take some getting used to.

Frank--Did you intentionally mix names from 4E and WoW, or did 4E use the same names as the new WoW races?

That's intentional on my part. The High Elves have been renamed "Eladrin" and now they are the splinter elf faction who are magic addicted and refused to abandon the magic world. The early concept art for the Eladrin was even just dressed as a WoW Blood Elf, it's pretty obvious.

The Tieflings aren't the old D&D tieflings at all. Now they are normal humans who made a pact with Infernal forces long ago and had their world destroyed. And now they all have weird face barbels and giant horns and red skin. They even released a video in which they had a female tiefling whose voice was someone trying to do the bad Eastern European accent of the WoW Draenei women.

I mean sure, they aren't the blue skinned Draenei, they are the red skinned Draenei, which is why they try to convince you to play one as a Warlock (interesting note: despite in-book rants about how you want to be a Tiefling Warlock, you actually don't. Tieflings are genetically inferior as any kind of Warlock except the Fey-Pact Warlock. If you want an Infernal Pact you want to be a Half Elf, a Human, or a Dwarf).

But yeah, the new Halflings are a lot more like WoW Gnomes than they used to be, so the PHB is very explicitly the "Alliance Races" (plus Draconians for some reason). That's not necessarily a bad thing, that's just a thing.

-Frank

Impossible. 4th edition halflings are swamp-rats. WoW gnomes are steampunk fetishists. With big noses.
The only thing besides a short size they share is that both suck thematically. Oh well, at least, the Lord of the Rings-movies didn't introduce gnomes.

WoW gnomes are tinker gnomes from Dragon Lance. Also, "magic-addicted" high elves were around before WoW from what novels I dimly recall reading in the 90s (like just about everything else in WoW was around beore WoW).

Shocking!

You need a smilie with a hat whose monocle is falling into his tea-cup.

Indeed.

I'm thinking the Eldarin and Elf 4e races are a result of the realization that 3.5e elves were just over the top, and so were split into two races. Each 4e race has aspects of the 3.5e elf.

If only. There are still too many elf-races. Normal Elves, Eladrin, Drow, Half-Elves. Pretty sure they'll still (re-)introduce Half-Drows, Half-Eladrin, and other crap like Dwelves or Elarfs, or Drogres and similar silly stuff. D&D always had a crapload of elves. Grey Elves, Sea Elves, Dark Elves, Wild Elves, Green Elves, Wood Elves, Silver Elves, Silvermoon Elves, High Elves, Gold Elves, Sky Elves, Water Elves, Fire Elves, Light Elves, Crystal Elves, Planetouched Elves, Blue Elves... It will take generations to eliminate that silly amount of sub-race crap/creep that pervades D&D. The bad thing is, Shadowrun is trying to imitate it with their own branch of elf-a-hol, making tons of elf-subtypes.
The Horror!!!
And no, I'm not talking about those Earthdawn-Demons.

This is one thing that D&D whateveredition won't succeed. They will try to appeal to the Elf-Fanboys, and re-introduce bajillion sub-elves. Sure, they might say that they don't intend to, but as soon as they roll out those Campaign Setting books, every author will try to blend in his own "unique" touch. After all, that's how all those silly elf-races started in the first place. And these same authors will still continue writing setting-differenting stuff.

and what was/is Dragon Lance a campine setting for D&D tush the tinker gnomes are well based in D&D. But WoW stole all it stuff from the huge amount of fantsy works that became part of Warcraft. SOme how Wow made warcraft suck. I still waiting for the Starcraft mmorpg it will come out.

Re: Strange starting racial choices and those that were left behind, et. al.

As this is the "positive" thread, I will make a simple observation and try to refrain from too much editorializing in order to stay on the "behaving" side of the list. In order to do that I will quote a few brief passages, nothing intrinsically rules related though.

Pointe the Firste: The Title of the basic player book is the Players Handbook, same as always. The subtitle is "Arcane, Divine and Martial Heroes". Why is this important?

Pointe the Seconde: To find that out we must move on to page 54, and the sidebar titled "Power Sources". The relevant bits are as such (with emphasis added):


So, the practical upshot of this is that it is fairly likely that when they bring out additional Player Handbook(s)—with five alternate "power sources", I am betting at least two additional PHBs to come—they will package at least a few new (or in this case old) player races in the books as well.


Precisely...

Whether or not that's a "good" thing is not something I will dicuss, lest I stray into negativeland.

That's how it works for every other system, and worked for every other system. "Unlockable" wasn't thrown around back when D&D or Shadowrun supplements added new races to play. After every new edition, it takes a time until everything from the old edition and its splat books is officially converted.

This is completely true. However what is specifically being complained about is the fact that races which were main book standards in 3rd edition and even AD&D are now relegated to expansion material, while two entirely new races are being added (keeping in mind that the 4e Tiefling and Dragonborn aren't in any way the Tiefling or Dragonborn from 3rd edition).

So Wood Elves went from optional content (fully playable Monster Manual write-up) to PHB content. Gnomes went from PHB content to an advertisement for the PHB2. Half Orcs went from PHB content to unmentioned. Two new races were added that have the names of the Tiefling and the Dragonborn (who were both expansion content, but presumably altogether gone from 4th edition because their names have been given to new races).

Gnomes will be back of course, they have a partially finished writeup in the Monster Manual appendix. But gnome players have a right to be annoyed. Anyone who is kvetching that Drow or Kobolds or whatever aren't fully playable in the new edition is being disingenuous - they weren't fully playable until expansion material came out for the last edition either. But Half Orc and Tiefling fans have a right to be straight pissed - their races seem to have been excised from the edition altogether.

-Frank

And in earlier editions, the same happened to classes like the barbarian, cavalier and assassin, to name three, while the bard went to PHB status with 2E (and was changed a lot as well). Changing priorities is nothing new.

A number of races can probably be reconstructed - like the half-orc with a mix of human and orc and using the half-elf as a guideline. Tieflings probably the same - if one uses the Eladrin as a baseline.

The barbarian and cavalier were not core material, they were expansion material in AD&D and came in as expansion material in 2nd edition AD&D as well. The Bard was in the PHB in AD&D 1st and 2nd edition both. Nonetheless, you are correct that priorities change.



Not really. The Half Elf doesn't have any overlap with the abilities of the Human or the Elf. It's a completely unique thing. Elves get a Wisdom and Dexterity bonus. For reasons unknown the Half Elf actually has a Constitution and Charisma bonus.

I'll agree with you that you can simply write up a Half Orc if you want, 4e races aren't super difficult to construct. But you seriously would be designing a brand new race completely from scratch. The Orc isn't finished either and the Half Elf "guideline" is apparently to just wander off in a random tangent unrelated to either parent.

The old school Tieflings is more problematic. The new campaign material has a new race which is called "Tiefling" and thus bringing in the old Tieflings not only requires you to design a new race, but to make a new name for that race as the name they used to have is taken by a different race in the 4e campaign and rule books.

-Frank

Or you can simply replace the 4E Tiefling with your Tiefling - people used to replace the 3E ranger with Monte's ranger as well.

You aren't seriously comparing house ruling different abilities for player characters of a specific class get to house ruling out a race that the newly published versions of the campaign settings have ruling entire kingdoms are you?

The new version of the FRCS seriously has entire nations and armies of the new "tiefling" race in it. Bringing back the old race called tiefling is in no way a small change to presented campaign worlds. It would be closer to house ruling Elves out of Shadowrun than it would be to house ruling out Satyrs.

-Frank

Of course I am serious. I'd house rule those armies in a heartbeat.

Without knowing the new background other than what I read in the preview book, I'd simply change the Tiefling empire or whatever it will be in the FR to have spawned the home-made tieflings - instead of a demonic pact, the nobles would have mated with demons, and their half-demon offspring formed the new nobility, and their descendants became the tieflings. And, of course, the Planescape tieflings would still be around - the "Descendants of the Nobility of this empire" tieflings would just be a part of the tieflings as a whole.

Where's the difficulty in that? All one does is use the new stats and (variable) appearance, and change a tiny bit of the origin fluff.

Edit: I mean, to sum it up: We have the 2E/3E Tieflings, who look different and have different powers because they have a fiend somewhere among their ancestors. And we have the 4E Tieflings, who look like they do because their ancestors made a deal with demons or such. It really is not difficult to incorporate the 4E Tiefling background into 2E/3E Tiefling background by assuming that those 4E Tiefling Ancestors did not just make a deal, but mated with the demons. Heck, that's how the elven tieflings in FR, the Fey'ir (or such) were explained- a noble house mating with fiends.

Also, house ruling elves out of Shadowrun would be easy as well. Just replace all elves with humans and ignore the Tirs, and you're mostly done. Or simply let the Tirs be instead populated by racist celtic-flavored extremist cults.

Just a reminder, try and keep things positive and constructive, rather than critical and negative. We have like 3 D&D threads up right now, there's no reason for all three to be full of bile and "This is why this game sucks".

That said, I've done a bit more reading, and me and a buddy made up a character each the other night. He made an Eladrin Warlock, I made a Dragonborn Warlord.

All in all, it was interesting. I'm still in the "like camp". I'm not gonna say it's the best game ever, as there's a lot of stuff that's either outright missing, or was ommitted as a design decision. But I think some of that stuff makes the game more intriguing, at least for me.

I grew up on old school D&D, so I can handle a game with no solid non-combat rules. A game like Shadowrun needs some in depth social rules, stuff for lifestyles, all that good stuff. But D&D is adventuring, dungeon diving, and killing stuff for loot. THe games never changed, and frankly, it never really will. The phrase "It's Roleplaying, not Rollplaying" gets bandied about plenty, so I'll flat out say it... Really, do you need rules for all that? For some groups, sure, and as I said, for some games, it's a necessary part of teh setting. But for D&D, not really.

I'm not saying you shouldn't rollplay. THe best, and most well defined characters I've ever played and played with were in my old Shadowrun game (Bull, Johnny 99, Mr White, etc). The second best though, miles ahead of any other characters and game, was a 2nd ed D&D game we played back around '94. We played taht game pretty steadily for a couple years, and we really fleshed out our characters, our backgrounds.

So really, i don;t see any of this being missing as a real flaw in the game. It just puts the responsibility of this stuff back in the GM and Players hands, rather than a set of complex (and very, very easily skewed) skills. And it's not like there are no skills, they're there, just simplified a bit.

One complaint my buddy Shawn had was that the books seemed dumbed down, with a lot of stuff getting hashed and rehased that, as he put it, "any gamer should already know". The DMG is at least half full of "How to roleplay" stuff that is almost completely useless and redundant to us (though I maintain that no matter how long you've been GMing, these are useful to review, as sometimes there's new ideas you never thought of, and sometimes it's good to refresh yourself a bit, especially if you play with the same grup of people regularly. You lose track of some of the things that crop up in other games). But as I pointed out to him... Not everyone has been gaming for 20 years.

It's obvious from the design decisions that WotC would like nothing more than to lure in some WoW players. Because as arrogant as we are as gamers, the fact is, WoW is bigger than us. By a LOT. The Alliance Guild I'm in currently is co-run by a guy I knew from the old RN Mailing List (Wolfstar, for some of you old timers). A lot of the folks in the Guild are RL friends of his. But after talking to some of them the last couple weeks, it's become clear that most of them have never done Pen & Paper gaming. A couple were actually completely clueless as to how you could play a game like that without a computer. So obviously, if you're gona get any of these guys into the hobby, you have to give them a simple starting point. And D&D4 provides that.

Frankly, I'm really, really interested to atcually try the game out in a session. I'm hoping to get a small practice session in this weekend with Shawn and a couple others. And I'm gonna go ahead and run a couple full blown sessions at origins with Caine and anyone else I can round up. It's not a hardcore RPG, but honestly, I think that intigues me all the more. It has some CCG type mechanics (Hell, I'm tempted to make up a set of index cards with the powers on them, and encourage players to flip or "tap" them to show they've been used), it has some tactical miiatures/board game elements ala Descennt or Warhammer Quest (Both games I love to pieces), it has some basic, straight forward character design ala WoW, and it's got teh core element of classic D&D behind it.

In it's own way, it's an innovative design. Like I said, I'll need to see how it plays and really mess with things a bit to see how well they hold up in the long run, but... <shrug> I think with the right group, it could be a lot of fun, as it'll provide some of the same type of gaming I get from Descent, but a a lot more open ended and allowing for a greater variety of play.

And for when I want hardcore RPGing, well... I still have Shadowrun.

Bull

Don't do that.

D&D4 has extremely strong Race/Class affinities and there are very small numbers of "effective" builds. Also the game math is predicated on the assumption that you will be using one of them - especially at high levels. Don't play an Eladrin Warlock, because it sucks. Eladrin are kind of on the weak side no matter what you do your bonuses don't fully synergize with any currently published class. But if you do play an Eladrin, you want to be in one of the decent presented archetypes for which there is currently no optimized race: like Control Wizard or Brute Rogue.

There are three kinds of Warlocks, of which only one of them is Charisma based (Fey type), and they are optimized for Halflings, Tieflings, Dragonborn, Humans, or (especially) Half-Elves. The other two are Constitution centric, and thus are optimized for Dwarves, Humans, or Half Elves.

If you're going to play 4e to high levels you have to build your character in the manner that you'd build a WoW character. There are penalties for stepping out of the guidelines and they are large. Being an Infernal Pact Warlock who isn't a Dwarf, Human, or Half-Elf seriously drops your DPS by 17%. Since DPS is your entire job, you can see how that might not be a good plan.

-Frank

Well I broke down and got a PH... one way or another I was going to get it anyway (damn collector instinct) but I figured since I had a few folks around here lay into it and like what they saw I'd give it a look. I've gotten a decent read into it, and skimmed over most of the rules for character creation, I do like that its evened down to 1 set of level progressions, although it would seem an odd choise the way the classes are set up really support the leveling system put into place. I also have found myself somewhat enamored of one of the classes I thought I would hate, the warlock. I think the idea of a crazed "archaeologist" who has committed himself to the "gods" of the Far Reaches would be fun to play (yes, I'd have to try and feed the party to my "god", cause it'd be that way). Although the racial changes at first kinda bothered me, I found that really it wasn't too bad. Gnomes weren't core back in the old days, the idea of seperating up the "high" elves and the nature elves was good, the dragonborn I could take or leave and I think changes to the half-elf finally made them a most viable race to play (took long enough!). I love the changes to magic... it doesn't take up 1/2 the book for just a few classes. The split between character "spells" and rituals looks to flow naturally. There are a few things that I don't like as of yet, but I'll save those out for one of the negative threads

Heh. This is so cute

I don't play WoW by this rule, so why should I play D&D this way? Besides, every RPG since the dawn of time has had "Optimal builds". Hell, Shadowrun sure as hell has them. I mean, why play a non-elf Face, or a melee character that isn't a troll?

Unlike a computerized RPG, which has a very unflexible set up with Player vs Computer (Or Player vs Player), RPGs are much more flexible. The GMs job is to set things so they're challenging but fun. If a PC is getting punished for playing an "un-optimized build", well... That's a bad GM.

Now, play nice Frank. Try and leave your sarcasm and derision to the other threads, please

Bull

Oh I am. The 17% wasn't just some random number, that's the actual number for not being the "right" race to play an Infernal Pact Warlock (though it goes up and down as you gain levels). The solid and inflexible math combined with long combats is an advertised feature of the new edition. The Warlock is a "Striker" and his presented role in the party is "DPS." The game math is written assuming that you will play a Warlock of the "right" type and that you will thus hit 50% of the time against normal enemies and 40% of the time against solos. If you play the "wrong" type you only hit 45% or 35% respectively. And since battles are now intended to last 20 rounds or more at high levels, those DPS shifts make a huge difference.

When we say that there are three types of warlocks, that's not character optimization snootiness - that's again an advertised feature of the new edition. There are exactly three types of warlocks that are allowed. That's a feature, and it's there to reduce the number of bad builds fo people to accidentally take and shorten the learning curve.

Frankly I honestly don't know why they didn't go the extra meter and write hard race/class restrictions, because the soft ones they have now are not very soft. Coming to the table with an Eladrin Warlock or a Dragonborn Wizard is like coming to a guild with a Survival Specced Hunter. Making the "proper" synergies is fairly easy (again, an advertised feature of the new edition), and there are a fair number of them for every class (again, an advertised feature of the new edition). There are Laser Clerics and Beat Clerics. There are Tron Paladins and Grind Paladins. This isn't sarcasm, this is explicit designer intent, and real people really like it.

But if you make a Tron Paladin, you go Dragonborn or Human, boost Strength and sub Wisdom. Doing almost anything else is an extremely bad plan. Making a Dwarf or Elf Tron Paladin is possible, but is pretty much restricted to point buy and is considered an unusual build. Making a Halfling or Eladrin Tron Paladin is "wrong." It is an advertised feature of the 4th edition rules that it is very easy to figure out what the optimal builds are, and it is an advertised feature of the game that it is supposed to be played with everyone using them.

-Frank

Okay, Frank, now say something you really like about the game. You know, 'cause this is the POSITIVE thread.

I always reflected that as a GM, I never enforced the whole, "trolls are 2-3 times as tall as you and therefore can't fit though doorways or into cars", since that could be very disruptive and time consuming to games.

Player: "I enter the bar to see the Johnson".

GM: "You ram your forehead into the doorframe."

Player: "I use the shipping door in back."

GM: "You get stuck as you try to crawl through and then the security guards repeatedly tase you in your helpless nuts."

So I guess that in principle playing a troll could be "balanced" by extreme social difficulty, but no GM I know actually wants to spend that much time and energy subjecting the troll to slapstick comedy.

Gnomes and half-orcs have been the least popular of the core races, no matter how vocal the players are who are fond of them. We'll have to see if the new (ugly) Tieflings will prove to be popular. Dragonborn will be for sure, especially now that they're a true-breeding race.

Alas, they still have half-elves and halflings. If it were for me, these two races would have gone the way of the dodo.

I honestly love making characters that aren't completely suited for their roles.

I'm the guy that makes Troll Technomancers and Gnome Warlords. I made my Gnome Warlord specifically because it's a somewhat silly thing to do and the Gnome is no longer a PHB class.

Of note, looking at the half-elves they are related to neither humans or elves... But their attributes come from something else entirely.

Meh, perhaps heterosis. Could be. The problem is still that there are too many elf-races. Of course, another problem that might be creeping up is swapping too many elf-races through human-races. Shadar-Kai, Tieflings, Cambions, and you can bet that there will be some bajillion genasi-half-human freaks running around.

Oh well, it's a D&D-ism.

Let's see...something positive about 4e D&D? Well, you don't HAVE TO play it. That's a big positive. Another is that they didn't try to back door their rip offs of WoW, so you can interchange things between the two games fairly effectively. Ok, so it's not a BIG positive, it's still nice of them to be so open about it. And, ahh, oh hey, there is one real positive positive here...the art is better than usual...much better than the earlier editions of D&D in the old AD&D days especially. And ahh, well, errrr, hmmm, yeah! Your 3.x and earlier edition stuff is becoming more valueable on EBay by the day right now and no one is going to come to your house and try to take it from you... yet anyway.


Lock and load brothers.





Isshia

I found another positive thing. Well, positive for my wizard, anyway.

I can use Sleep on skeletons.

SCORE! No more of this "undead are immune to sleep" crap. When it's nappy time for the lich, it's nappy time for the lich.

Immunities in general are mostly gone - probably. There's still some argument over the fact that the description of Undead says that they "don't sleep" and that they aren't listed as being immune to sleep in their actual description. But as soon as that's sorted out, we can probably get to the real heart of the matter: staking vampires in their sleep (something which due to some very badly written rule interactions was physically impossible in 3rd edition games).

I think the removal of immunities went too far myself, we're at the point where using one weapon over another isn't usually a meaningful tactic. But it is easier to have too few monster abilities than too many.

-Frank

The MM says "Undead do not need to breathe or sleep." Semantically, they can sleep and breathe (the latter makes sense, as vampires should be able to speak).

Yes, very astute.

Okay, I know this is a positive thread but here's something that really irked me about the art: a lot of it (especially in the MM) is from older-edition books! We sat down and flipped through the pages and were like "Yep, that's from Oriental Adventures," "Oh, the original Monster Manual there", "Miniatures Handbook." I do like the art for trolls, however. Also, pseudodragons are still listed as coveted pets and that made me smile. Right now, that's what my gnome warlord is questing for (other than the complete destruction of the kobold race and the next place where he can get a stiff drink).

That irks you? The recycled art is the best stuff in the book! If all the art was recycled, and it was all awesome stuff like the Bog Hag, I'd have a much higher opinion of the art as a whole. All the dragonborn look like muppets and the new art is much more "Unwired Cover" than it is "Unwired Interior."

I could seriously do without the new beholders. Or the new white dragons. Or those guys with three skull heads.

-Frank

Haha, okay, yeah. The Dragonborn do look like muppets and the beholders do look quite silly, as well. But I place a high value on new art and even if some of it is less-than-par I'd prefer new art to the recycled if nothing else then just for more variety.