So I wanted to wait a little while to really get a feel for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons
before writing a review of it. I know that many have mixed feelings about the new version, especially so soon after 3.5 came out. I do find it interesting that do to the Open Gaming License 3.x will live on in other companies through the likes of True 20, Pathfinder RPG, and other 3rd party projects. So if you decide that 4th Edition is not for you fear not, there will be plenty of d20 products for the foreseeable future. I also highly recommend anything by Monte Cook which you can read more about at his page.
Enough about other products though, you’d like to hear about Dungeons and Dragons. First off, the new edition definitely takes the game in a new direction. So how much you like the game will depend a lot on whether or not you like the new direction. While the transition from 2nd to 3rd edition felt like a natural progression from DnD’s roots, 4th edition feels very new. It has been streamlined and balanced so that everyone has roughly equal power during combat. It definitely feels as though most of the non-combat has been stripped from the game. Skills are trimmed down a lot, being more similar to 2nd edition proficiencies than 3rd edition skills. You have two to six skills, which have much broader definitions now, and the bonus is determined by your level and the associated attribute. Just about everything else has a direct bearing on combat.
Every class has the same progression of powers as each other. So I do worry how they will manage to keep expanding new classes and keep them feeling different. On the other hand, they do an excellent job of keeping every player involved during combat. There is also a definite teamwork feel to things. As we played we discovered that our actions interacted with each others turns a lot more than they used to. As an example, I once placed a storm cage around a dragon with my mage. The rogue then used a positioning strike to push one of the nearby minions into the cage instead of the sneak attack he planned on using. You really get the sense of working together. I’m not sure how well it scales down to few players though, it is designed for groups between four and six. I know this isn’t usually a problem for my current group, but I remember the days when I would play with just one or two others.
From a game master’s perspective the game is certainly easier to manage. Monsters are a lot simpler to put together, even NPCs with class levels. Instead of fleshing out a full character, which is definitely a lot faster at higher levels than it used to be, you just pick one or two powers at close to the level of the npc. It is a great improvement over spending labourous hours building up an npc in 3.5, only to have it be killed in a few rounds of combat. Even if you want to spend time preparing fully fledged characters, the creation process is streamlined and a lot easier.
So as much as I’d like to gripe about how messed up things are in the new version, I have to say I’ve enjoyed playing it. It won’t be for everyone, because it definitely is a different game. But if someone else had published it and given it a different name, I’d have to recommend looking into it. It may not be what you are looking for, but it is definitely a fine game.
In an unrelated note, I have recently acquired a large collection of older games. Expect to see reviews of some old classics, plus updates on the latest versions of these, in the near future.
Apathy Rating: 3/5
. It wouldn’t be fair for me write a review of my own work, but a few reviews are now available at