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Alright- there's still a lot to be released about this- and normally even I would wait to see what they have to say in full before deciding I don't like something- but there are some things I just don't like at all already- and they have nothing to do with game mechanics.

So here are some of the pros and cons ive had with what i know so far about the newest version of this classic Geek Pass time.

PROS
- Streamlined game play overall.
- Simplified rules, everything should be much easier to wrap around with far less debates over rules.
- More options for some classes
- Less feelings of uselessness in situations (Being a Rogue in a fight against undead or constructs- making it impossible to take advantage of your only decent combat ability)

Cons
- Ridiculous things like resting for 8 hours heals you completely.
- Turning a cleric into an MMORPG buffer class.
- Turning Races into another way to Power Game.
- Turning a well thought out plane touched race into a way for people to play as devils.
- Turning a key monster into a playable race (Dragon Born).
- Turning a KEY race from the fantasy world all this was originally born from into a bunch of swamp/bog dwelling amphibious race is insulting (HALFLINGS! HOBBITS!!!!)

some of these things are just ridiculous - and having this as the core rules is just not right. This edition seems to be ripping apart the core creation Tolkien created, all to make it "cool" to non geek types. Sorry but DnD will always be a Geeks game, trying to draw people into it by making it cooler wont work, it will just insult their original targeted customers.

A lot of these things I can’t comment on, what with regarding my attitude towards fluff (It can be changed relatively easy) But I do have some comments



I agree with all of this except for the last one. I sort of liked running into situations I had no hope against. It had a palpable sense of danger to it.



Well, the resting thing makes everything easier for a clericless party, and it is certainly a lot better than the week long resting sieges such clericless groups make. And I’ve always used the Cleric as a buffer anyway (Oh the things you could make the fighter do… It was almost like we were playing exalted) I actually like that race plays a bigger role though, besides being an almost completely first level thing.

But the planetouched thing is pretty weird. It’s probably aimed at the White wolf crowd

It's not about being scared or having a sense of danger- everyone should have that feeling in a challenging situation - its the feeling of being the only one that is incapable of doing anything to help the situation just because of a major class ability. Especially when even though something might not have major arteries in a certain location - it doesnt mean it lacks a weak point (example - Constructs are weak at the joints because theres nearly no way to armor a joint perfectly compared to a large part of the torso, head, thigh etc etc- and even undead creatures need certain parts of their body to still function in most cases- i can still see Oozes being immune though)

Also a party shouldnt go "Clericless" - everyone knows the perfect party is a Warrior, a Mage, a theif, and a Cleric. If you dont have a cleric you find a way to heal faster- like potions, magical items- heck give a rogue a wand of cure mod wounds and you're set as long as he doesnt die. Healing wounds over night is ridiculous. People dont heal that quickly even from just muscle strain- much less being stabbed or cut. Also as a buffer- the cleric only had a couple spells a normal wizard could use - making their healing abilities far more important than a buffer.

Plane Touched characters have been around forever - its what they have turned them into that is so annoying- to turn these human looking people that have small horns and maybe a tail and a strange eye color into horrible demons with huge freakn horns... And why? So you cant play it in a normal game? Who would let someone like that into their tavern much less city or town? But now apparently where ever you go theres dragon people and frog hobbits...

It's happening everywhere, Sage. Companies are simplifying to draw in younger audiences, and fething over the veterans in the process. Fluff butchery is fine to them, as the "Old" audience isn't going to pay attention, and the "New" one won't have any incentive to look at the old stuff.

Butchery of Fluff, in my opinion, is the worst thing a company can do. The 4th Ed. changes have people on a large number of forums ticked off. Hopefully the D&D fans will stand up and beat some sense into developers: 40Kers didn't, and now books that focused on Customability and Strategy have been changed SPECIFICALLY so that kids, and this is just about the exact quote, "Can play the game with the best of them". This is happening in D&D. An eight year old will soon be as capable of playing a successful game as an eight-year veteran.

Final Thing: The focus on power-gaming now days... *shudder*. Rolled up a character with only two stats above EIGHT (Dex at 9, Charisma at something like 11), and I'd be fine roleplaying it. Many other 'new' players? They'd scrap that character in a Heartbeat because it isn't straight 13+'s.

Point. I conceed to your logic.



Perhaps, but a group shouldn't be forced into that straight jacket of a role. What If you were aiming for a more knights of the round table feel? Or an Asian wuxia sort of theme? A group shouldn't always have to have a Cleric. The speedy recovery allows for much more varied party structures.



It is. But as a combat enthusiasist, I'm going to point out that it is also ridiculous to expect a person to take more than three solid sword swings (at maximum) and still be able to fight, let alone breath



I was more referencing Teiflings in particular. I find your reasoning quite logical on this matter. The Same reason why I don't really let my group play warlocks actually (Besides the fact that they are useless)

I think they demoted gnomes to monsters now too

No more Jan Jansen-characters?

Believe me, you could get by without a Cleric before. Natural healing wasn't too bad before the rules change in the first place, and it gave more of an edge to things -- you wanted to be careful in the wilderness because you weren't guaranteed to be on top of your game until you got back to town for some additional healing. You had to decide if you drank your healing potions expecting trouble, or waited because you thought you'd be safe.

That said, D&D has always shown it's dungeon-crawler roots, and (especially in core mods) if you didn't have the "ideal group" (which is pretty similar to what Sage points out) the going might be tough. But that's the fault of the mod writers (mods are, in general, very poorly written and usually written to specifically address the mod writer's home group), not the game.

But I've long been of the anti-simplification crowd. The only simplification of an RPG I've approved of in ages was Matrix play in Shadowrun, and that's largely just so that you didn't effectively have two games going on all the time -- 'deckers and everybody else. The best way for varied play is to make sure that, no matter what your class, you have some way to contribute in the ways you want your characters to contribute in as many situations as possible. I've hated WotC's tendency to reduce skill lists (I've long joked that 4th ed would have four skills: doing things, thinking about things, sensing things, and talking about things). It sounds more and more like they're turning D&D into cookie-cutter characters, where it's harder and harder to differentiate between, say, two Fighters of equivalent level. And the "no critical hits against undead, constructs, et al." remains, IMHO, one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of in my life.

After Eberron (the D&D ruleset which seemed to be written to try to tempt me back into playing), I thought there would be hope, but from what I've heard about 4th Ed...It's not sounding promising.

From my experiences running and playing RPGs, there are two things which will consistently ruin the fun of your players. First is a lack of feeling challenged or in danger, this can partly be averted by a good GM, but what's the GM supposed to work with when the 150 hitpoint Fighter is going to heal completely at the end of the day no matter what? Keep them awake all the time? It won't take long before your players walk. The second is a feeling of uselessness (which is why I have trouble understanding why people even play half of White Wolf's games or Call of Cthulu). If the character can't do anything for a long period of real time (and a good fight will last over an hour), the player will get bored, frustrated, and ultimately disruptive. They also tend to get resentful, at either the GM or the rule system, for preventing them from having any fun. Any system that effectively removes characters from useful play is going to have a tough time keeping people playing it.

You make quite a few good points. Though I still find that a fighter can be wacked with a sword ten or twenty times harder on my suspension of dibelief than this new natural healing, But that's because I play the Riddle Of Steel (Protip: Don't get hit. EVER)


Call of Cthullu (I know I'm breaking away from the topic, but I need to say this) Only works well with people who read Lovecraft and want to replicate the feeling. The Draw of a Call of Cthullu game isn't to be awesome, but rather to see how long you can keep and ordinary man alive and sane. Part of the draw is that feeling of hopelessness.

But thats only for a few people really

Fair enough on the hitpoints thing, TheSpiffman (I have heard some good things about Riddle of Steel, mostly relating directly to your comment -- combat is serious business). That is, to some extent, a matter of taste, because some people do not take well to their characters dying (though a good GM has the sense to at least make it seem epic and cool), but I agree, the amount of damage sustainable by the average PC or NPC rapidly approaches ridiculous. There is also a bit of game balance to it. In a highly "level" regulated system like D&D, you need a lot of differentiation between the levels, and both taking and dealing massive amounts of damage as your level increases is usually how it's handled. In a game not based on "level" (WoD or Shadowrun, for instance), you usually see less of this.

-- And Also --
I should say why I agree that it get so silly for this. It's all about knife edge danger. In my long-running Spycraft game, if the enemies don't have rocket launchers, it's hard to make most of my players worried. I've been trying to come up with ways to make combat seem more dangerous. Making every dangerous situation actually dangerous encourages roleplay (IMHO, at least) and gives the players more stake in their characters. Besides, they'll always remember the time they barely survived that incredible fight; they'll forget all the mooks they dispatched in a few blows with nary a scratch.

An entire section of my brain is devoted to dying in a particuarly fantastic fashion while playing Shadowrun. (Seriously, I have a kilo of Plastic explosive in my cyberarm. If my heart stops for more than ten seconds... Boom!)


I still am probably going to Check out 4th edition though, if only because it's there. D&D just has a sort of traction you can't just ignore.

Now Shadowrun's 4th ed was pretty darn good - it did simplify matrix combat and many other things- while keeping things interesting and - as a good shadow run campaign must be- deadly. I still think Character creation could be laid out much much better in the book - so you can say what you want to make- and instantly have your skills and gear descriptions right along side their costs in BP. Ive never had so much fun rolling dice as I have in Shadowrun honestly.

But some of these things they have done... And I cant imagine having a group of people and not a single one of them would want to be a cleric- its one of the most powerful classes in the game with both the ability to keep friends and alleys alive- while being able to guide the game and still be able to fight up close AND cast powerful spells. And if you dont like that- there's the Druid! another great class- one of the most powerful and self sufficient classes in the game capable of the same healing and more- as well as being a provider (forging and hunting while on long journeys, predicting and being a scout when you dont have a ranger since they can easily pass through forests) they also have the awesome wild shape ability- making them capable of flight, burrowing, and fighting as a great beast, or scaring off people or bandits- the number of uses for wild shape and for being able to communicate with nature is incredible. Also gets some good damage spells.

And if you still cant find someone to play that you can always have someone capable of healing others with magic or otherwise.

Shaking off a 10 minute battle with gorgans and hydras takes a lot more than 8 hours of sleep- it isnt fair to have people who can lock themselves up in a room for 8 hours so they can bust out like they spent a month in some super healing spring of youth. I'd much rather they say something like 8 hours of rest restores HP equal to 10 x you Con modifier (if greater than 0) + your level. So if you are level 5 and have an 18 con (+4) you get 45HP back from sleeping. So healthy people get better from injuries faster while the weak sickly people only get their Level back in hit points- or double with treatment (heal skill DC 10).

That kinda stuff isnt difficult and i think many people would find that more than fair. After all - if the DM puts you in a dungeon - and knows you dont have a cleric- if you are stuck in there part of the challenge IS not having time to rest and heal your wounds - and this would make DMs more aggressive than they need to be- adding more combat to the game- and slowing it down.

Perhaps it is only my group who bears a particular resentment towards clerics. Not one of us has a healthy relationship with celestial beings, real or imagined. And we favor heavily Urban campaigns, so most druids are an improbibility.

I still have my same problems with HP that I have always had, but I can see how you could be upset. I doubt though that there will be much reconciliation between us.

I will tell you what groups work without Clerics though. One time our group of five played exclusively Sorcerers and wizards, which I affectionately call "The Arcane College". After fifth level we were death incarnate.

Getting to fifth level was a problem though

That reminds me of something I've heard rumors of that I'd consider a serious improvement to the game -- all magic is becoming more "dynamic." While I respected the hard choices having a spell list introduced, I always considered them really really silly. I always preferred the Bard and Sorcerer "dynamic casting," where you had a list of spells you knew and then could cast any of them a specific number of times per day. That always struck me as more "realistic" then someone rereading "Fireball" out of their spell book four times in a night, to secure the magic in their minds for four castings.

That is good news, but I wonder exactly how they will pull it of in such a heavily regulated system like D&D. Typically, I play wizards for the Acidemic leanings, but Sorcerers tend to feel like real power.

I've noticed a lot of systems that focus on magic tend to divide spell types between ritual spells and "on the fly spells" My favorite system for this sort of thing was Ars Magica, you knew certain schools and forms of magic to either lesser or greater degrees, and you could warm your spells acordingly. There was a lot of flexibility in the system, which I greatly appreciated.

But that sort of thing does not translate well to D&D typically. The Level system is designed to keep everyone on roughly the same plane of proficency, and it's hard to do that when a clever magician finds a way to one shot people with a simple spell.

More or less the Wizard was imprinting the spells into his mind in a magical way- like scribing a scroll onto your memory (thus Intelligence is their best stat) rather than just memorizing it over and over again.

Also Druids work in nearly any setting- even in urban environments- it actually makes them even more useful, warping cart wheels to stop escaping thieves (we actually had a druid that turned the wheels into squares) also perfect for locking doors in an even better method (warp them so they have no space to move or open) and also they can still speak with the local animals like cats and dogs- even rats. Yes druids have more power in the open areas but they are still very effective in urban areas as well.

Also Clerics have the option of not using a celestial being as the source of their power- they can worship anything they want as long as the DM allows it. They don't even have to call it worship. A common choice is to call upon a virtue and while not worshiping it they instead choose to live by it- in exchange they receive the ability to use divine magic to deal out justice and help those in need of it. And if you really want - be an evil Cleric- the inflict spells are very powerful.

Also bards make a powerful support character- they can fight, cast spells including healing spells, and their songs/poems whatever are very powerful. Since their songs that add to hit and damage stack as long as its from another source - so if you have a party of bards- say 5 level one bards- at the start of the fight they can each start their music - next round and for the next - say 4 rounds- they all have +5 to attack and +5 to damage. As you know- at level one that is pretty crazy- that practically turns each bard into a level 4 fighter fighting level 1 encounters (meaning your chances to hit are much much higher- and nearly every attack against a goblin, zombie, hobgoblin, orc, level 1 anything other than something with a HD higher than a d8 is dead). In a war scenario a group of friends worked out that it would be more effective to have 20 bards than to have 20 warriors because while each warrior would have better weapons and armor as well as hit points- each and every bard would have +20 to hit and damage negating even the best non-magical armor and a large portion of hit points. One fighter in a game went as far as to spend 10,000 gold to hire his own band of bards to bolster his fighting skill- in game he did it because his character was a big time show off that felt fame was more important than loot (I was a thief so - we didnt get along too well), but for a while he had 6 level 3 bards that would follow us into dungeons and record the tales of his journeys and sing songs of him in battle just making him ridiculous...