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I just got back from playing D&D Fourth Edition.
Yes, you read that correct 4th Edition! No I didn't invent time travel. My friends at the local gaming store (The Gamer's Gambit) scored the demo version of 4th edition to run at their store for their players. It was fun. A lot of fun. In about four hours, we got through four encounters. (Well sort of five, but one of them was a bit fudged.) Not shabby. Now, this wasn't the full experience. We didn't have the books, just our character sheets, and a cheat sheet summary of enough rules to play the characters on hand. The DM had the adventure, and enough rules to run the adventure. That's about it. So there's heaps, and heaps left about the system to learn. But it was fun. It was different. No question, this is not old school D&D by a long shot. On the otherhand, if you are willing to let go your preconceptions on what a wizard is, a warrior, a ranger, etc, you can have a lot of fun with this.
Now, let me say, while the game was fun, and we did get through a lot of encounters, realize these were first level characters. And even in 3.5 I can get through a lot more encounters at low level as a DM than I could once the PCs got to a substantial level. The proof, of course, will be in the long play. I suspect that the momentum will be maintained because of the easy of bookkeeping---the bane of the gamer experience. I played the tiefling wizard, and wizards are notorious for being the worst for the whole book keeping shebang. Not this edition. I had virtually no difficultly tracking what my options were. And I never ran out of spells, because I had spells I could cast at will. Which meant that I always had the ability to be effective. The dice on the other hand had other ideas, and I spent the majority of the session hanging out at the high end or low end of the die. When I rolled well (a crit) it was awesome to do some serious damage as a first level wizard. On the other hand, I wiffed way more than I would have liked, and in the end, I was the only PC to push up the daisies permanently. (The final climactic battle came down to literally a one on one, with our dwarven fighter the only remaining PC standing, and the opposing wizard running for the hills Bloodied, and none too happy.)
I think the system is going to be too difficult for converting easily existing campaigns. Perhaps not impossible for the dedicated and determined world builders out there. For the average joe, it might be easier to hit the campaign reset button. That's what I would do if I were still running my campaign. I don't imagine I'll get to play in a real 4th Edition campaign for some time. Too much else going on, and I don't expect my current DM to be converting anytime before next year. On the other hand, maybe he'll turn out to like this edition far better than I anticipate.
My overall opinion is: a good teaser to satisfy the curiosity, but am still reserving final assessment after I've got the whole package to peruse.
Yes, you read that correct 4th Edition! No I didn't invent time travel. My friends at the local gaming store (The Gamer's Gambit) scored the demo version of 4th edition to run at their store for their players. It was fun. A lot of fun. In about four hours, we got through four encounters. (Well sort of five, but one of them was a bit fudged.) Not shabby. Now, this wasn't the full experience. We didn't have the books, just our character sheets, and a cheat sheet summary of enough rules to play the characters on hand. The DM had the adventure, and enough rules to run the adventure. That's about it. So there's heaps, and heaps left about the system to learn. But it was fun. It was different. No question, this is not old school D&D by a long shot. On the otherhand, if you are willing to let go your preconceptions on what a wizard is, a warrior, a ranger, etc, you can have a lot of fun with this.
Now, let me say, while the game was fun, and we did get through a lot of encounters, realize these were first level characters. And even in 3.5 I can get through a lot more encounters at low level as a DM than I could once the PCs got to a substantial level. The proof, of course, will be in the long play. I suspect that the momentum will be maintained because of the easy of bookkeeping---the bane of the gamer experience. I played the tiefling wizard, and wizards are notorious for being the worst for the whole book keeping shebang. Not this edition. I had virtually no difficultly tracking what my options were. And I never ran out of spells, because I had spells I could cast at will. Which meant that I always had the ability to be effective. The dice on the other hand had other ideas, and I spent the majority of the session hanging out at the high end or low end of the die. When I rolled well (a crit) it was awesome to do some serious damage as a first level wizard. On the other hand, I wiffed way more than I would have liked, and in the end, I was the only PC to push up the daisies permanently. (The final climactic battle came down to literally a one on one, with our dwarven fighter the only remaining PC standing, and the opposing wizard running for the hills Bloodied, and none too happy.)
I think the system is going to be too difficult for converting easily existing campaigns. Perhaps not impossible for the dedicated and determined world builders out there. For the average joe, it might be easier to hit the campaign reset button. That's what I would do if I were still running my campaign. I don't imagine I'll get to play in a real 4th Edition campaign for some time. Too much else going on, and I don't expect my current DM to be converting anytime before next year. On the other hand, maybe he'll turn out to like this edition far better than I anticipate.
My overall opinion is: a good teaser to satisfy the curiosity, but am still reserving final assessment after I've got the whole package to peruse.
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I'm pretty sure there's other stuff abounding on the net about the changes, so I'll stick to the ones I felt the impact of. (I'm not the only person to have played in these modules...there was the whole D&D Experience game day that people got to run through the same adventures with the same characters.)
The big one is that now abilities will fall into several catagories: At Will which you can use all the time (Magic Missile at will is awesome) Per Encounter: which is a bit stronger type ability that you'll get to use once per encounter, per milestone (think of it like a "save point" in a video game, basically every other encounter) and per day. The higher up that scale, the more powerful that ability will be.
Daily powers reset after the Extended Rest (which takes 6 hours) Everything else resets per encounter, so you don't have to track it too much. There's a feature called a brief rest (I think that's the word, I referred to it as taking a breather) which is a five minute rest, and everyone can use up a "healing surge" to get back 1/4 of their normal HP total. That's cool. You can also heal yourself the same way in the middle of combat by taking the action of Second Wind. Which is nice.
I think it will take the average player a few sessions to readjust their thinking. Saving throws no longer work the same. Instead of me hitting you with a spell, and you having to make a save, now, you'll have a Reflex, Fort and Will, and I'll be targeting those like AC when I use my spells. (So, for example you now make a "to hit" roll versus Reflex with Magic Missile.) It comes out about the same, it's just less rolls. There are still saving throws, but those are to throw off longer term effects.
As a party of first level adventurers, we had lots of interesting options. That was cool. It wasn't Look I cast my magic missle. I'll be sitting in the corner until you fighters mop up the rest of the kobolds. Nor was it: well, there's my one Cure Light Wounds, looks like there's nothing else for me to do but swing this mace, and hope no one dies. Every character had interesting things to do. That's pretty cool. Now, I want to see how they sustain that through X levels of gameplay. (Where X is the number of levels I'll eventually get to play. :D )