Wizards of the Coast has been getting a lot of hate for their Fourth Edition (alright, it’s their third, but you know what I mean) of the infamous Dungeons & Dragons franchise of tabletop roleplaying since they first announced they might want to do it.  People hate change, and roleplayers are an extreme example of that in practice.  I finally got my three core books of the new system in the mail a few days ago, and after going over the books and watching some games in action, I’m ready to bust out my personal reactions.  Roll a jump check to see.

It is different.  Oh mother of Gruumsh is it different.  Cats are sleeping with dogs, right is wrong, bell-bottoms are coming back yet again, and the rules all say it’s okay.  So, why am I so happy?  When D&D 3e (Dungeons & Dragons: Third Edition, for the short-handedly challenged) came out, several of the people I knew embraced it and the ways it simplified that which had once been needlessly complicated.  It opened up creativity and customization where once there were restrictions and stereotypes.  It did away with silly rules that often existed for the sake of tradition.  D&D 4e (Dungeons & Dragons: Fourth Edition, if you’re still abbreviation handicapped) does this again, and I’m honestly very happy with the results, both on paper and in practice.

For the most part, tradition is thrown to the dogs.  What remains is a game that holds its roots in spirit alone.  This is not Dungeons & Dragons, but rather his child, fresh with ideas and ready to re-evaluate every paradigm we dared not question.  Old terminology and concepts return, but only as labels to something completely new.  Through this, I think it manages to create an environment that is far more friendly to new-comers, while promoting creativity and excitement for everyone present.

What has changed?  Everything and nothing.  Someone used to Third Edition will have no trouble settling into the game, and already understands the more complicated concepts, such as Attacks of Opportunity.  What really changes is what constitutes a character.  In Third Edition, your class dictated just about every number on your character sheet, as well as the progression of most of your special abilities.  If you were a wizard, hitting things with sticks was out of the question.  Rogues could dodge fireballs.  Fighters made good meat shields, because they had thick armor, lots of hit points, and nothing better to do than stand in things faces and flaunt those qualities.  Wizards and other spell casters had all of the cool abilities, but their problem was they may have had too many of them, with books upon books of lengthy rules and descriptions that made casting a spell a several minute process.  The complexity often drove away players unwilling to deal with it all.

Creating a character in Fourth Edition is an exercise in customization and choices.  Every avenue you could take is capable, balanced, and cool.  You, however, are designing your unique creation to fit your style and vision.  You start with a variety of fantasy races to choose from.  The selection is somewhat contested by D&D purists.  Gone are the popular half-orcs and gnomes, replaced by Tiefling (a race of fiendish, demon-tainted humanoids) and Dragonborn (large, scaled, dragon-featured people with a dragon’s breath attack), often considered "freak-show" races by experienced players, as they traditionally would be rare and shunned by civilization.  Races are no longer a list of bonuses and penalties.  Instead, each have genuinely useful abilities and a unique flavor that sets them apart from the others.  Your choices are:

• Human: Diverse and spirited.  Most races gain a +2 bonus to two of the six traditional ability scores.  Humans gain it to only one, but it’s to which ever one you like.  Humans gain bonuses to their defenses, and gain some extra customization options in their abilities and skills at first level.  Several of their optional abilities later on focus on their ability to put their best foot forward in the face of adversity.
• Dwarf: The classic Tolkien race has changed little over the decades.  They are resilient and wise.  Their short stature slows them slightly, but their abilities grant them more than enough to stand up against intense punishment, and I don’t mean just extra hit points.
• Elf: Graceful and wise, elves focus heavily on their woodland heritage in 4e.  They make excellent archers, as their abilities focus on movement and accuracy.
• Halfling: Quick, cheerful, and bold.  The Hobbit-inspired race will be in D&D until the franchise dies.  Halflings have always made excellent thieves and rogues, and that holds still.  Their abilities make them incredibly hard to hit.
• Half-Elves: Half-Elves have finally separated themselves from being the worst of human and elf.  The half-breeds are now the people-person race with a variety of diplomatic bonuses.  Their ability to make limited use of one of another class’s basic attacks can lead to some interesting characters.
• Eladrin: Eladrin are a new race, covering the magical, snooty high-elf department.  They favor the scholastic and arcane.  Their innate ability to teleport creates worlds of possibilities on the battle-field.
• Tiefling: Demonic and cruel in nature and appearance.  They make excellent casters, rogues, or even inspirational leaders.  Their Infernal Wrath ability grants them the ability to do extra damage to anyone who would dare wound them.
• Dragonborn: Strong and proud.  They are best built for up-close combat, both in their ability to take punishment and deal it back out.  Their breath attack isn’t deadly, until you factor in that it doesn’t slow the barrage from their already fearsome sword-arm in the slightest.

Then comes class selection.  Forget what you already knew about Clerics or Fighters or Wizards.  What was once a chart of gradually increasing numbers with the occasional cool ability beside them is now several pages of options.  Each class comes with a few special abilities up-front, and a variety of powers to choose from in customizing what kind of abilities you’ll have in the thick of battle.  Their are eight classes in the core book.

• Cleric: Clerics used to be caster-fighter-heal-tanks.  They had it all, and we mediated it by saying "but you have to do what your god tells you".  Now, clerics serve a much more supportive role, rather than being able to do it all alone.  Most of the cleric’s healing and boosting are done either in addition to or as part of them standing up front and beating their opponents’ faces in.  For example, one potential attack a cleric can get is a ranged attack called Lance of Faith, a bright blast of light that both deals damage and grants an ally a small bonus to their next attack.  And there’s no limit to how often they can use it, but more on that later.
• Fighter: Fighters have always been the first national hit point bank.  Their job is to get hit so you don’t have to.  Now, not just good at getting hit, fighters get a range of powers that make that easier.  If they get an Attack of Opportunity on an enemy trying to run past them, it stops them in their tracks.  Enemies that the fighter targets become challenged, and not only take penalties to attacking anyone but the fighter, but give him free attacks on them for trying.  When a fighter demands your attention, it’s a good idea to listen.  Add to that a variety of special attacks, and you’ll never hear a fighter say "I guess I attack him" ever again.
• Paladin: Paladins were always the fighter/cleric combo, and that hasn’t totally changed.  A paladin still gets some healing and magic, and he can still take a lot of punishment.  Similar to the fighter, he has the ability to Divinely call out an opponent, and if they don’t step up to the line in close combat with him, they can expect a bit of holy-shock-reinforcement for their cowardice.
• Ranger: Rangers no longer suck.  Okay, they suck, but only for the DM.  Rangers have stepped up to the damage-dealer plate, and whether focusing on swinging about a pair of weapons or hanging back and picking off enemies like ducks, they have mobility and damage in buckets.  Their Hunter’s Quarry ability lets them mark their nearest enemy as their prey, adding extra dice in damage to any they deal to it.
• Rogue: As much swashbuckler as thief, rogues rely on agility, stealth, and charm to dole out the punishment.  While their sneak attack doesn’t do near the damage it used to, gone are the entire races of creatures immune to it (even zombies and golems can be your unwilling pin-cushion), and here are a variety of powers designed to set your enemy up for it.  Rogues are anything but useless.
• Warlock: Originally released as a new class in one of the 3.5 edition supplement books, the warlock was so beloved, he even made it in as a base class in the PC game Neverwinter Nights 2.  The warlock is no longer the ray-whore, one-trick pony he once was.  Instead, he makes use of his dark-pacts and curses to up the damage-count.  Enemies under the effect of your curses take extra damage from you and grant you some bonus upon their death, based upon which pact you choose at character creation.  Warlocks can also play the utility part of rogues with their mastery over shadows and comfort with thievery skills.
• Warlord: Warlords are tactical masterminds.  They grant solid bonuses and healing to their party, and have a variety of special attacks that specialize in moving their allies around the field and granting them extra opportunities for creative strategy where they might not have had it before.  If you like the role of the cleric, without all of the religious attachment, the warlord suits you perfectly.
• Wizard: People who used to love playing wizards are generally unhappy with their 4e counterpart.  These were people who kept stacks of books next to them at the table and took as long as everyone else put together to take their turn.  The new wizard still keeps a spell-book, with the option of choosing which expendable spells he wants at his disposal each day, but his options are now far more limited, in keeping with the available arsenal of the other classes and the new power system.  Wizards still have variety as a strong member of their assault and are still the best for blanketing large groups of weak enemies.  The advantage is that wizards no longer have nothing to do while waiting for their big-guns to be needed.  The system encourages them to churn out the flashy lights, and straightens out the growth curve.  They are no longer leaps and bounds more powerful than everyone else at high levels, and are not frail and worthless at low levels.

Powers

Powers are your special abilities and attacks.  What used to be limited to spells and the occasional class-feature is now the core of everyone’s assault.  Each character gets three types of powers. 

Always at your disposal are two (three, if you’re human) At-Will powers.  These are similar to your basic "I hit it" with a slight twist.  A fighter might choose Cleave, which causes slight damage to an enemy adjacent to your target, or Reaping Strike, which still does a little damage on a miss.  A Rogue could get one called Deft Strike, which lets him move two squares before his attack or Piercing Strike, which uses the targets reflexes (much like a wizard’s fireball), rather than how much armor they’re wearing, to see if it hits.  If it’s your turn, and you want to hit something, you can use an At-Will power, and there is very rarely a reason not to.

Then come Encounter and Daily powers.  Encounter powers recharge in between fights, as long as you can muster five minutes to catch your breath.  For example, a wizard could hurl his Shocking Sphere spell, without worrying he might need it in a later fight, because it will be available to him again in each encounter.  Daily powers are like traditional spells in that they can only be used once before you need to go to sleep for the night to get it back.  They are also far more potent than the other powers, and almost always have some sort of effect, even if they fail (such as the wizard’s fireball spell doing half damage to anyone that it misses).

Customization

The biggest gripe I hear about Fourth Edition would be that multi-classing has been almost entirely removed, and that that removes the freedom to customize their character into something unique.  You now pick a class, and are that forever.  You can’t be a Fighter/Rogue, favoring which ever you want to take the most advantage of.  To this, I scream a violent "bullcrap," and here is the reason.  Multi-classing was fudging yourself a unique character.  You were combining two cookie-cutter concepts in an attempt to create your own.  Sure, several classes had points at which you could make choices, and there were feats and skills to choose from, and the whole system was not bad, but in the end, you were attempting to turn someone else’s ideas into your own.

If I made an axe fighter in Third Edition, I would likely take the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats, which would make me hit more often and do more damage with an axe.  I differ from a spear fighter in that the spear fighter does more damage with a spear.  In Fourth Edition, the axe fighter might choose to take the Crushing Blow encounter power at third level, which does lots of damage, and more so if you use an axe, hammer, or mace.  The spear fighter might take Armor-Piercing Thrust, a spear or light-blade attack that must beat the opponent’s reflexes rather than armor, granting more versatility in exploiting enemy vulnerabilities.  The two could even be in the same party and serve completely different functions, just because of the attack they chose at level three.

Feats, the greatest element in character customization in Third Edition, are now available in greater supply.  The character will receive six of them every ten levels, as opposed to only four in 3e.  Also gone are the long feat-chains that forced you to take several fairly worthless feats to get to the ones you wanted.  Almost every feat will now count for something, and will only typically require you to have a certain ability score or level before taking it.  Different races also have substantial improvements available to them in the form of feats for those who want to emphasize the unique characteristics of their chosen peoples.  Feats are almost always circumstantial or passive bonuses, rather than attacks, which now fall under powers.  Many passive class bonuses in Third Edition are now feats in Fourth Edition.  For example, the coveted Evasion defense is now a feat available to anyone level 11 or higher.  Any skill that was not part of your class can be trained in with a feat.  There are very few reasons to even need to dabble in more than one class, and in those few circumstances, there are feats for that too that grant you limited versions of class abilities and allow you to swap your attack powers for theirs.

Random little things I like.

And that about wraps up the things I wanted to rant on.  Now, assorted other changes that make me smile.

• Healing Surges.  Without getting too in depth, characters can revitalize themselves a certain number of times per day.  The need for a healer is significantly less.  They’re still nice to have, but for the most part, all they do is trigger these surges for you, since you can only do so once during any given encounter under your own power.  It really is an elegant system in practice.
• Action Points.  Love ‘em.  Similar to the optional Third Edition system, but not quite, you save up Action Points and spend them to take an extra action on your turn.  They accumulate every couple of encounters and reset when you rest for the day, so you have every reason to make use of them rather than horde them.
• Attacker always rolls.  Characters now have four defensive values that the attacker must beat.  Fortitude, Reflex, and Will now function like AC.  Surviving a wizard’s fireball means him rolling his Intelligence against your Reflex.  And that leads to:
• Everything is a simple ability roll.  There is no Base Attack Bonus, or any of that crap.  Every roll is your ability score bonus plus half of your level plus a d20 roll.  A wizard can hit with his staff just as effectively as a fighter of equal strength.  He just doesn’t have the attack powers to do so with style.  Even skills follow this same formula, with a +5 bonus to skills that you are trained in.  Players wanting to do strange things fit rather well into the mix.  Two guards have crossbows pointed at Grubmar, ready to fire if he takes another step.  Grubmar says he wants to jerk the rug out from under them in order to facilitate his escape.  Hmm.  Have Grubmar roll his strength against each of the guards’ reflexes.  It’s easy to let the players be creative.
• Much more balanced monster difficulties.  Planning encounters is easy.  Making your own monsters is easy.  Balancing an encounter takes very little effort, leaving time and effort to plan the flavor and gimmicks of what is to come.
• Wizards use staffs and wands.  In Third Edition, staffs and wands were spell batteries that no one wanted to make or waste using.  In Fourth Edition, staffs and wands enhance and empower existing spells the caster already knows and are extremely beneficial.  Finally, they’re back in the hands they belong and with a purpose.
• It’s not about what you have but how you use it.  In past versions of D&D, it wasn’t uncommon for a creature to be completely immune to everything a person has to attack them with, or vastly vulnerable to others.  You may have had to have a certain type of item to harm them or a certain damage type.  Still others would be completely immune to certain class features (poor rogues).  While having the right key for the lock certainly doesn’t hurt in Fourth Edition, no equal-level challenge is impossible just because you don’t have the right toys or abilities.  Gear is far less of a focus, and a smart group of characters who work well together can go an entire game with just the starting clothes on their back.  Items of significant roleplay value, such as an amulet given to him by the elven queen, will still serve the character ten levels down the road, without him falling behind for not upgrading with the rest of the players.  Every character will have something to offer every round of every fight.

Suffice to say, I’m happy.  I realize the game drops some of its organic, perhaps "realistic" (ha!  sorry, gotta laugh at you people) nature in converting to something that favors balance and dramatic situations.  Yes, I feel the game does manage to build a sort of tension with a lot of its mechanics, even if they aren’t always perfectly logical.  People argue with me how much more they can do with a third edition character, to which I eventually realize they are listing off books and books of resources.  Faced corebooks versus corebooks, fourth edition has infinitely more room for me to play around, and I can only imagine how many more books of ideas, powers, and feats we have to look forward to.  My poor paycheck.

P.S.  Weep not for the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk, or Sorcerer.  If you strike them down, they will return more powerful than you can ever imagine.

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