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Alright, so I found the leaked version advertised on nuklearpower the other day. Anyways, I wanted to give my first impressions after skimming through the Player's Handbook and making a character. Keep in mind this isn't a comprehensive review -I haven't read through the whole thing yet-

1. Just from looking at it, it seems there's more of an emphasis on combat than there was on 3.5. Every stat has a direct effect on combat (usually). Me and two friends reviewed it. One (Blaze) disagreed and said it seemed to have more emphasis on a well-rounded game due to the fact that encounters had the chance of being "skill-based" or "diplomacy-based."

2. Skills have, thankfully, been scrunched down to a select few rather than a full page worth of options. One of the most dreaded things about being a rogue in 3.5 was the crazy long amount of time you needed to fill in that darn skill sheet. Hide and Move Silently have both been rolled into Stealth. Jump, Balance, Tumble and the like are all in Acrobatics. Knowledge skills have the "knowledge' bit cut off and now utilize different stats instead of all using intelligence. Thus, the wizard who spent most of his life in a library probably won't know more about nature than the druid who lives there.

3. Each class has powers now, which seem to have taken the place of spells for the caster classes. This means you don't run out of magic missile. Also, Sorcerers appear to have been replaced by "Warlocks," a halfway evilish class.

4. Most of the complaints about the classes, in general, have been answered. Wizards don't appear to be complete weaklings compared to everyone else at lower levels. Also, magic missile is no longer so essential that not getting it is comparable to trying to drive a car without any limbs. There are other spells, just as good. There's no more situations where you run out of decent spells and your only remaining option is to cower behind a corner, or laughably attempt to inflict 2 points of damage on the gigantic bugbear charging at you with your quarterstaff or dagger.

5. WTF WHERE ARE THE GNOMES.

yeah, I got to play a demo game at a shop near my house. It was fun. Here's what I took away from it.

1. healing surges-they are your friend.Thanks to this and healing from a cleric, our dwarf fighter was able to be knocked into negative hitpoints somewhere between seven and forty two times in two encounters. As our wizard put it, "it's like a sadistic form of narcolepsy". He was our yo-yo dwarf. up, down, up down...
2.Rouges can sneak attack people to the face. Really, they need combat advantage, which can be gained trough flanking, high ground, or a few other means. The +2 to hit from flanking and an at will attack I had (sly flourish) meant I could whip out +10 to hit with 1d4+2d8+7 damage. At first level. Every single turn.
3. Nothing auto-hits. Sounds fine, until you realize that bad luck meant my entire party got around two hits in on the second encounter. Then, we all died.

4. It's fun. No more need be said.
5. see rule four.

Gnomes are on page 277 of the monster manual along with a few other PC races. Theres also gnolls, githyanki, githzerai, ect. $th really gives you a good amount of races to start with. All of these have no level adjustment btw. I have .pdf of all the core books.

Edit: Heres a little thing I made regarding 4th edition.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

I'm just going to point out that Gygax made crazy things like a floating ball of eyes and ambulatory cubes of acid jello.

Okay then, I've been wanting to get into D&D for some time now. I have a few friends with a group, and I've been invited to join if I can learn on my own, so they only have to explain the finer points, not the basics.

The reason I'm asking this here: Last time I heard, they're sticking with 3.5, which, from what I know (I haven't done much reading yet) has a [censored] load of books and add ons.

My question is: Should I wait for 4th Ed. and try to start a group of my own, or should I try wading through the huge amount of 3.5 stuff?

Note: The only things I know about D&D is a few bits of character creation (not much) and bits and pieces from various conversations with my D&D friends.

It depends on how you want to play. If you want a more combat oriented game I'd say go with 4th. If you actually want some mechanics for roleplaying AND combat go with 3.5. Right now I'm playing a game of Pathfinder a.k.a. 3.7 which is 3.5 but with a few of the good things taken from 4e.

I haven't seen 4th edition as much, but I have played 3.5

From what I've gathered for comparasin, 3.5 is like the Elder scrolls and 4th is like WoW.

3.5 is a good and solid system. Lots of flexibility and customization. The rules can be a little confusing for some people, but everything has it's place. There are still a few weird things, but its pretty good.

4th is fast, frenetic, and very game like. It is easy to pick up and play with a lot of people. Encounters are interesting and varied and can be quite entertaining. Unfortunately for all the fun of the combat, it tends to run into some hiccups out of combat.

I say go with the group right now. Remember, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. you can always try 4th eddition later, but for now have some fun :D

I played 4th edition, and you know what?
KELDOTH IS DISPLEASED!

Alright, here's my synopsis. Like the Spiffman said, DnD got WoW affied. If you look through the books, the illustrations, names, and effects just read like a WoW character.

Pretty much what happened is that all the fighting classes got book of 9 swords afied and all the mages warlocked.

Now, I don't have too great a compliant with fighters, only that they shouldn't get things remotely like spells, what with there fighter name, but also that I liked the book of 9 swords. the 3 classes in it were fun to play because they weren't like any others. And then they took out spells,

The game was ruined. Spells were the best part, looking through stacks of books to find obscure spells that could, when mixed with other spells, make your character so ungodly powerful. Now all casters end up so samey because of how few spells there are.

I'm also really pissed that all the classes are now so samey. 1 Warlord is pretty much similar to 50% or other warlords. And the thing is, they balanced the classes by making them similar. Mages no longer get raped in melee and fighters now have things to do that can do affects, ala mages. Rouges are just pretty much slightly different fighters with another skill set.

I can see how this makes it easier for new people to start out in DnD, and how it's WoWness will draw in more people, but I loved the chocking dept of 3.5.
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I've DM'ed the trial thingy at the special D&D game day when it was released.
I also have the 4th ed books.

I started D&D when 3rd edition was just released and learned D&D while learning the new system. Low level was fun, high level was skewed with the insane skillcheck inbalance and what not.

They took what problems 3rd ed (and 3.5) had and tried solving them. In my opinion they solved a lot of that. There are no insane inbalances. At high level Melee classes (fighter especially) now matter instead of just being a fifth wheel.
Casting classes got tuned down and with reason. the amount of spells got lowered. you have spells now helpfull in combat (presented in the class ability list) and you have rituals now. Most people with the prerequiste skills and feats can cast those rituals, example are knock, raise dead, etc.

WoWified. I both agree and disagree with that statement. In MMO's a clear role is (supposedly) defined for most of the classes that a game like that has. So that you have a rough idea what each class is supposed to do.

They took that idea and implemented it to D&D to help explain the classes. Either you're a Defender, a striker, a Leader or a controller.

Defender is the Meatshield that stands in the Vanguard to take the blows, Paladin and Fighter.
Striker is any class meant for Damage dealing.
A Leader class is a supportive one, being Cleric and the new Warlord class.
For the moment the only Controller class is a Mage, meant for helping the group deal with large groups, either through Damage or incapacitating some.
Is it so bad giving classes a role to fulfill? I think it helps players organise more and know what they are up to when chosing a certain class.



Well if this was still 3.5 the warlord would have the same abilities every other character with levels in the class.
The fact that you can have abilities different from every other warlord is a big advantage. Ofcourse somethings will still be in common with other warlords, thats what keeps it as 1 class.

Anyways, 4th Ed. got me back into D&D. Everything is much more streamlined, future books will be released with other base classes. Druid, monk and psion for example are yet to appear (and they will).


Ofcourse this all is my opinion, disagree what you will. :)

From what I hear, they just about shafted wizards.

They are limited to very few spells a day, and the rituals that they can use to take more are usable by the Melee Classes too. They also dropped the majority of the Schools.

For what I've seen, they have more of some spells, all their weak at will spells can be cast at will and they have spells that can be used once per encounter, but their only really good spells are once a day.

Plus. there's like, no spell selection.