Sunday, March 02, 2008

4th edition

DISCLAIMER: (1) These comments are based on the notes I took and my own recollection of events. They have therefore been filtered by my own faulty memory. If there are mistakes about 4th edition, they are most likely my own, and not due to the DMs. (2) I'm mostly going to write about my impressions, not the rules, as I am sure those are all going to be posted on wizards.com or enworld.org. If you have questions, post them in the comments and I'll try to answer them. Again, answers will be based on my own, possibly faulty recollection.

The biggest issue for me coming into DDXP was streamlining vs. simplification. As anyone who's played 3.5 knows, there are a lot of rules options that are great to have, but are far too complicated. So the news that 4.0 will streamline a lot of these is good news. But there's the worry that in streamlining the rules, WotC will actually create a simplified system, without the crunch that makes DnD so great. I'm happy to report that that's not actually happened. The changes generally work to make combat more crunchy, while also making it move faster than it did in the past.

I played three tables of 4.0; the two LFR mods, and the dungeon delve. For the record, the LFR mods were run by James Wyatt and Michael Mockus. I played the cleric in the first mod, the wizard in the second, and the ranger in the delve. I liked how the characters were done; especially with the cleric, it felt like I was playing a cleric, and doing cleric-y things, but still able to do damage, and not merely buff the party or heal all the time.

The powers in general gave you more tactical options. Some will move either you, an ally or an opponent. One of the best moments for me was when I used turn undead to push a number of skeletons off of a cliff, making the encounter much easier. (And for those who think 4.0 is going to be too easy, a number of tables had problems with this encounter, even though it wasn't the last encounter of the mod.) And the guy playing the warlock at our table really enjoyed teleporting around whenever he killed something.

A worry some have is that 4.0 will eliminate the need for resource management, but this didn't seem to be the case. Certainly the existence of per-day powers will require the choice of when to use it (and, for the wizard at least, which to memorize). Even per-encounter powers have to be managed well. the cleric has a set of three powers, and can only use one of them in the encounter. Healing, as always, needs to be timed well.

Attacks are all handled the same way; it's an attack roll against a number. People have four numbers -- AC, reflex, will, and fortitude. The players often forgot to declare which number they were attacking, but I assume this will become second nature once we're more familiar with 4.0. Saving throws are now simply a roll of the d20. On a roll of 10 or higher, you save. It's not quite as simplified as it looks. Many creatures and characters have various bonuses. At least one of the dragons we fought had +5 to all of its saves, and the eladrin ranger had +5 to any saves against charm.

It was interesting how they dealt with sleep; it's less uber than it was, but at the same time, more useful. Gone is the HD limit it used to have, but it no longer immediately puts mobs to sleep (some DMs didn't realize this). Instead, if the attack hits, the monster is slowed, and then if he or she fails the first save, he is put to sleep. Fun to try on the dragon -- I gather that one of the groups that killed it did so by putting it to sleep.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was how 4.0 deals with skills. Many skills have been combined together to form one, new skill, which can be used in numerous ways. On one level, this oversimplifies things. But generally it seems to just streamline them. For example, spot, search, and listen have been combined into 'perception', and jump, swim, etc. have been combined into 'athletics'. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Skills can be used in many ways. At the con, the most important use I saw was in what the DM called a 'skill challenge'. Skill challenges vary in complexity and difficulty. As they vary in complexity, they require a greater number of successful skill checks to be successful. As they vary in difficulty, the DC of the skill checks goes up. Skill challenges require a fair amount of creativity on the part of the DM and the players. Our skill challenge was 'get away from the guards'. And so the players did a number of different things. A couple of the characters hid, one ran, and one used his street smarts to find a shortcut. It worked well, but could work less well if either the DM or the players are dense (or if the DM is mean).

Overall, I'd have to say I really enjoyed my first experience with 4.0. I'm still really curious to see how character creation works, but I think 4th edition is definitely going to be fun.

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