D&D fourth edition
Today I played in a test run of D&D fourth edition.
None of us (except maybe the GM) had read all the rules in advance,
though all but one of us had played extensively under the third-edition
rules (3.0 and 3.5). And the GM had a module with pre-fab characters
and quick-start rules, which is what we played.
It's different from third edition. Better? Worse? Don't know yet -- just different, with some interesting twists. We'll need to play more before I can make that judgement.
They have made first-level characters much more effective than in previous editions. That's a win in my opinion; it used to be that first-level characters were both fragile and lightly-powered, so you'd start an adventure, have one fight, hole up somewhere to lick your wounds, try again the next day, and so on. One bad role could send a healthy character into near-death (or actual death, if the party couldn't act immediately to intervene). Heroics were pretty much impossible.
Contrast this with the following sequence involving my first-level dwarf fighter under the new rules. The enemies were a priest with half a dozen underlings. They ambushed us and the priest opened by attacking my character with a spell. (And the underlings threw spears and stuff.) This knocked me down almost to half my strength (which is to say, down to 16 of 31 hit points). Our cleric gave me a quick burst of healing and I charged the priest, hitting him but not hard enough to kill him (no surprise there). In the next round the following happened, in order: the priest and about four underlings attacked me, knocking me into negative hit points (and to the ground); another party member attacked the priest from the other side and pushed him into my spot on the board (so he was standing over me); another party member gave me some (ranged?) healing that brought me back to consciousness; I, from the ground, made a big power attack (this character's once-per-day special attack), killing the priest and sending him flying; I stood up, looked at the line of underlings, and said "who's next?". It was fun. :-) And it was fun that I don't think would have been possible under previous editions.
(Now, mind, D&D is as unrealistic as it ever was: I asked if I could make that attack, the GM (and other players) concurred that it was legal, and I said "let me be clear: my dwarf is going to make a big power attack from the ground... with his two-handed maul?". You've got to be willing to suspend some disbelief to play this game, but if you are, it can be fun.)
Characters have a variety of types of abilities. There are the things you can do (for the cost of an action) at will; for the dwarf fighter these were things like cleave attack, and for the wizard they were things like casting cantrips (light, ghost sound, maybe others). I didn't study the other three character sheets enough to speak to them. There are also abilities you can use once per encounter and once per day; for the dwarf these were both stronger attacks, while for the wizard the once-a-day ability was to cast either a sleep spell or an acid arrow attack (substantial damage to one opponent plus splatter damage).
Every character has the ability to do some self-healing. A character has a certain number of "surges" that can be used daily, and each surge does some number of points (these stats vary per character and appear to increase with level gains). During combat you can heal yourself once; outside of combat you can do as much as you want up to your daily limit of surges. This means that clerics, who in past versions were largely responsible for party healing, now get to do other things. When I mentioned earlier that our cleric gave my dwarf some healing, what actually happened was that the cleric did something that allowed me to use one of my own surges at a time when I wouldn't have been allowed to otherwise. Meanwhile, the cleric was making attacks. Also, this healing is no longer variable; I know that each surge is going to get me (in the dwarf's case) 7 points, and we don't have to roll dice and possibly expend extra healing potions because the rolls sucked. It's just bookkeeping.
Wizards now have magic missile as an attack (at will) rather than a spell. It is no longer automatic, which would be unbalancing; you roll to hit as with any other attack.
Everything offensive is now a roll against some stat, rather than a spell that might be automatic or might get a saving throw. I noticed on my character sheet a notation along the lines of "+N for saving throws against poison"; I'm not sure what that means in this context. Is my fortitude stat boosted in that case, or are there still saving throws?
They've changed how character death works. When a character goes to 0 hit points (or negative), he falls unconscious and is on his way to dying. On his next turn he makes a straight die roll (needing 10 on a d20); success means he's stabilized and failure moves him closer to death. Three failed rolls means death. This means that a single large hit can no longer instantly kill you (even if you're at -20 or something), and that the party has time to react (administer healing, pull you to safety, etc). Yes, this is unrealistic in cases like "a nuke exploded in front of you", but see previous comments about realism. I think this will make players a little more willing to take risks, which in turn makes for more exciting (and story-worthy) games. (Note that in the fight I described earlier I never actually had to make this check; by the time my turn came around I had been healed. But knowing that this is how death worked influenced my decision to make that charge in the first place. That and the fact that this was the first session, so if I died and had to start a new character I wouldn't be too far behind...)
Everything we've done so far was combat-heavy, and that's how the character sheets read too. This doesn't mean you can't have a game more focused on role-playing; I think the system is largely agnostic toward that. Earlier editions were somewhat that way too. A lot of what happened in my last campaign wasn't really well-covered by the rules, either. We haven't seen skills come into play yet, and I don't know very much about feats. The feats I've seen have all been combat-related; most but certainly not all of the ones in third edition were too.
The game feels like it was significantly influenced by games like World of Warcraft. The tabletop system (figurines and the corresponding style of play) is part of it; another part is that you no longer have to do investigation to find out what magic items are. You find treasure and you can just know what it is; the days of testing potions or paying for analysis are over. In one way that was tedious in prior editions, but it also meant the characters might have to do some work before benefiting from their loot. I don't know if this is good, bad, or neutral; I'm just noting it.
I don't know how level advancement works. I understand from the GM that you don't tend to accumulate lots of new skills/spells/attacks but, rather, upgrade existing ones. Apparently the designers wanted a character sheet to fit on two pages no matter what level. I appreciate the goal but wonder about the loss of variety. It's true that in my last campaign, by the time my sorceror reached 8th level or so, combat problems could be largely sorted into two groups: ones that called for polymorph and ones that called for fireball. But it was still nice to have the lower-level spells "on tap"; sometimes they were the right tool for the job. Now, some of that "right tool" aspect was "right level"; if my goal was flight, the 3rd-level fly spell was better than a 4th-level polymorph into something with wings. I don't know if spell level is relevant in the new edition. So this might not matter as much.
I also don't yet know how character-creation works and what the points of variability are. These characters were pre-generated. I don't know which of my character's characteristics come from being a dwarf, which from being a fighter, which from choosing option A over options B and C, etc. I don't think I could make informed decisions in generating a character now, though; I have to learn the system first. So prefab characters to learn on are good for bootstrapping.
I had fun today. We'll need several more sessions to finish the module, and by then we should have a better idea of how a campaign, as opposed to a session, works. I'm looking forward to doing that.
It's different from third edition. Better? Worse? Don't know yet -- just different, with some interesting twists. We'll need to play more before I can make that judgement.
They have made first-level characters much more effective than in previous editions. That's a win in my opinion; it used to be that first-level characters were both fragile and lightly-powered, so you'd start an adventure, have one fight, hole up somewhere to lick your wounds, try again the next day, and so on. One bad role could send a healthy character into near-death (or actual death, if the party couldn't act immediately to intervene). Heroics were pretty much impossible.
Contrast this with the following sequence involving my first-level dwarf fighter under the new rules. The enemies were a priest with half a dozen underlings. They ambushed us and the priest opened by attacking my character with a spell. (And the underlings threw spears and stuff.) This knocked me down almost to half my strength (which is to say, down to 16 of 31 hit points). Our cleric gave me a quick burst of healing and I charged the priest, hitting him but not hard enough to kill him (no surprise there). In the next round the following happened, in order: the priest and about four underlings attacked me, knocking me into negative hit points (and to the ground); another party member attacked the priest from the other side and pushed him into my spot on the board (so he was standing over me); another party member gave me some (ranged?) healing that brought me back to consciousness; I, from the ground, made a big power attack (this character's once-per-day special attack), killing the priest and sending him flying; I stood up, looked at the line of underlings, and said "who's next?". It was fun. :-) And it was fun that I don't think would have been possible under previous editions.
(Now, mind, D&D is as unrealistic as it ever was: I asked if I could make that attack, the GM (and other players) concurred that it was legal, and I said "let me be clear: my dwarf is going to make a big power attack from the ground... with his two-handed maul?". You've got to be willing to suspend some disbelief to play this game, but if you are, it can be fun.)
Characters have a variety of types of abilities. There are the things you can do (for the cost of an action) at will; for the dwarf fighter these were things like cleave attack, and for the wizard they were things like casting cantrips (light, ghost sound, maybe others). I didn't study the other three character sheets enough to speak to them. There are also abilities you can use once per encounter and once per day; for the dwarf these were both stronger attacks, while for the wizard the once-a-day ability was to cast either a sleep spell or an acid arrow attack (substantial damage to one opponent plus splatter damage).
Every character has the ability to do some self-healing. A character has a certain number of "surges" that can be used daily, and each surge does some number of points (these stats vary per character and appear to increase with level gains). During combat you can heal yourself once; outside of combat you can do as much as you want up to your daily limit of surges. This means that clerics, who in past versions were largely responsible for party healing, now get to do other things. When I mentioned earlier that our cleric gave my dwarf some healing, what actually happened was that the cleric did something that allowed me to use one of my own surges at a time when I wouldn't have been allowed to otherwise. Meanwhile, the cleric was making attacks. Also, this healing is no longer variable; I know that each surge is going to get me (in the dwarf's case) 7 points, and we don't have to roll dice and possibly expend extra healing potions because the rolls sucked. It's just bookkeeping.
Wizards now have magic missile as an attack (at will) rather than a spell. It is no longer automatic, which would be unbalancing; you roll to hit as with any other attack.
Everything offensive is now a roll against some stat, rather than a spell that might be automatic or might get a saving throw. I noticed on my character sheet a notation along the lines of "+N for saving throws against poison"; I'm not sure what that means in this context. Is my fortitude stat boosted in that case, or are there still saving throws?
They've changed how character death works. When a character goes to 0 hit points (or negative), he falls unconscious and is on his way to dying. On his next turn he makes a straight die roll (needing 10 on a d20); success means he's stabilized and failure moves him closer to death. Three failed rolls means death. This means that a single large hit can no longer instantly kill you (even if you're at -20 or something), and that the party has time to react (administer healing, pull you to safety, etc). Yes, this is unrealistic in cases like "a nuke exploded in front of you", but see previous comments about realism. I think this will make players a little more willing to take risks, which in turn makes for more exciting (and story-worthy) games. (Note that in the fight I described earlier I never actually had to make this check; by the time my turn came around I had been healed. But knowing that this is how death worked influenced my decision to make that charge in the first place. That and the fact that this was the first session, so if I died and had to start a new character I wouldn't be too far behind...)
Everything we've done so far was combat-heavy, and that's how the character sheets read too. This doesn't mean you can't have a game more focused on role-playing; I think the system is largely agnostic toward that. Earlier editions were somewhat that way too. A lot of what happened in my last campaign wasn't really well-covered by the rules, either. We haven't seen skills come into play yet, and I don't know very much about feats. The feats I've seen have all been combat-related; most but certainly not all of the ones in third edition were too.
The game feels like it was significantly influenced by games like World of Warcraft. The tabletop system (figurines and the corresponding style of play) is part of it; another part is that you no longer have to do investigation to find out what magic items are. You find treasure and you can just know what it is; the days of testing potions or paying for analysis are over. In one way that was tedious in prior editions, but it also meant the characters might have to do some work before benefiting from their loot. I don't know if this is good, bad, or neutral; I'm just noting it.
I don't know how level advancement works. I understand from the GM that you don't tend to accumulate lots of new skills/spells/attacks but, rather, upgrade existing ones. Apparently the designers wanted a character sheet to fit on two pages no matter what level. I appreciate the goal but wonder about the loss of variety. It's true that in my last campaign, by the time my sorceror reached 8th level or so, combat problems could be largely sorted into two groups: ones that called for polymorph and ones that called for fireball. But it was still nice to have the lower-level spells "on tap"; sometimes they were the right tool for the job. Now, some of that "right tool" aspect was "right level"; if my goal was flight, the 3rd-level fly spell was better than a 4th-level polymorph into something with wings. I don't know if spell level is relevant in the new edition. So this might not matter as much.
I also don't yet know how character-creation works and what the points of variability are. These characters were pre-generated. I don't know which of my character's characteristics come from being a dwarf, which from being a fighter, which from choosing option A over options B and C, etc. I don't think I could make informed decisions in generating a character now, though; I have to learn the system first. So prefab characters to learn on are good for bootstrapping.
I had fun today. We'll need several more sessions to finish the module, and by then we should have a better idea of how a campaign, as opposed to a session, works. I'm looking forward to doing that.