I'll never understand the people who complain about not buying new editions of the games because "it will invalidate" all my stuff. Nor will I understand people who sell their entire collections because the new edition will "make it obsolete" and "all my stuff is now invalid".

There's still good stuff to be had. I trimmed by D&D collection a long time ago, got rid of several 1st and 2nd edition books, but I certainly kept what I considered valid--I have the original hardcovers (1st Edition DDG for the Win, Cthullu and Elric rock), the "classic" adventures, but I sold Dragonlance. I kept Every Forgotten Realms release though, regardless of edition.

I mean, people buy video games but many of them will likely become "unplayable" after a series of years. At least people can still play Original D&D, "BECMI" D&D, AD&D 1, AD&D 2, D&D 3e, etc.

Sweetie... all of my computer games are playable, I maintain a 386 just so I can play some of those old games... (Which is getting harder every year...)

There's a lot of hullabaloo now because Wizards is releasing 4e under a more restrictive OGL license. They're not releasing a "separate SRD", you have to refer to the core books, nobody can do supplements until 2009 unless they pay a $5000 license fee and be registered as a company and sign an NDA, and the morals clause is in there.

Personally, I thought the OGL was a little too permissive.

Now that it's about 2 weeks before the launch of 4e, based on all the previews we've seen, does anybody have any thoughts pro or con?

Personally, I've ordered the 3 books and the first FR book, but right now from what I've seen I'm not very excited. It seems way too tactical and not enough variety.

I feel kind of dirty for it.. but after reading Tycho's ramblings about the WoW CCG, I kind of want Wizards to go the way he talks about, in making a D&D CCG that is fully an RPG. (wow, that's a lot of initials, lol.)

FR sucks. Eberron for the win.

DnD was always tactical, meant to be played on a map with 5 foot squares and all the stuff that comes with it. You can simplify it and just run through stuff in your head in 4th ed, just as you could in 3.5, 3, and so on.

And... not enough variety? What the - there's plenty of variety more than in games before. This is the first DnD game where the warrior finally can do something else than swing the sword at the enemy 20 times straight, with the occasional charging/bullrushing or tripping! Do you mean the race/class selection?

My thoughts on 4th Ed - it's the first DnD game I will probably like, instead of feeling lukewarm about. And I had a blast laughing at the tiefling excerpt, imagining them as emo japrock-wannabes.

I'm playing a 3rd edition D&D game right now, and I have a level 3 warrior, with a spiked chain. I have tons of options besides swing/swing, such as tripping, disarming, etc. Not sure what you really mean.

Honestly, I hate the direction Wizards has gone with 4th ed. It feels a hell of a lot less like D&D than like WoW: The RPG.

Unnerf THAC0

Cuber, it has gotten a little more tactical, in that whole sections of the books are now setup as "battlemaps", etc. It's less abstract than it used to be. I've seen that in the most recent adventures, and the "squares" instead of feet sort of bug me.

By variety, I think they've added tactics to the fighter but removed a lot of the fun of being a wizard. (100% class balance to me is a fantasy that can never be achieved, so why bother trying). They're also removing what we consider "core" monsters, treasures, and spells (such as a lot of enchantment and illusion spells) until PHB2 or whatever else they come up with. So, yes, there is a lack of variety. In streamlining they remove things like "death effects", logical immunities (undead now can be affected by sleep), etc.

I'm really reserving judgment until I read all the books. Maybe it's not as bad as I think. But we'll see. Outside of the Forgotten Realms, nothing really attaches me to D&D anymore, if that gets screwed up I guess I'll stop following D&D.

3 things I don't like about DnD and 4e especially.

1. Releasing a new player handbook each year!? Talk about fostering fights with the DM over which books to use.
2. The squares thing is rediculous, unless they want to allow you to set sqaures to any size, like if you want to play in space with spaceships, the elfen spaceship can move 6 squares or some other silly thing.
3. They took a nice concept such as cross class skills, or feats and metafeats which theoretically allowed you to build your charachter in any direction and removed the ability for variety of charachter and role completley. I can no longer be something wierd like a Mage who specializes in diplomacy and runs a kennel of hunting dogs.

i havent played as much as i want as all the ppl i would play with moved away so the change isnt to much for me if i ever get back into it. hopefully!

but i'm really bummed about the classic gnome being removed for the tiefling. Although, i LOVED the vid they had with the gnome and tiefling interview that was on the wizards site. heh 'i have a lair? do you have a lair? plus i can give gold to nice explorers i meet'

3rd edition, for the win!
The meatshield warrior has rolled a natural 20 for an intelligence check!
(The druid feels so left out)

And yet, nobody forces you to play it less abstract if you like abstract. And it isn't that hard to convert the notation used: 1 square == 5 feet.
Straw argument - a 100% happy life cannot be achieved either, so why bother trying? And the wizard was very, very overpowered at the 3rd edition, while non-spellcasting classes had so few combat options, which directly translated to their effectiveness (with some exceptions), that it was laughable. Playing such classes was simply boring.


I'm not sure about the second point here, but if it's true then yes - it sucks. The first point - well duh, Wizards really like their money. But as long as it's written somewhere in an official sourcebook (and not a Splatbook of Broken, published by some 3rd party), it's core and canon.


Umm, you just mentioned 50% of your options. As a warrior in 3rd ed, you can: power attack (if you have the feat), charge, trip, disarm, sunder, bullrush. Then there's stuff like using items, walking or breathing, but everyone can do that so I don't even bother mentioning it.
Even a level 1 character in 4th ed gets many combat maneuvers (sample characters had, if I recall correctly, ~3 at use powers, 2 encounter powers and 1 daily), with additional ones on every level.



I answered 1 (they like money, perhaps too much) and 2 (1 square is 5 feet in normal campaigns - change it to something else if you're playing a campaign with elfen spaceships) already.
3, I disagree with. Feats are still there, and you can work even on non-class skills. The 4th edition works in a different way than the previous one - you no longer get penalized for not specialising in something, you receive bonuses for specialising. Which means that you can do decently well even things you didn't spend any effort working on, and if you did, for example burning a feat on non-class skill, then it works even better for you.


Don't forget Final Fantasy. 4th Ed is Final Fantasy: The RPG.
Seriously. Comments like that piss me off - you didn't provide any arguments, instead only repeating an often-repeated but ultimately empty of context (and thus worthless) catchphrase.

Ignore prior statement, I was

Well, all I wanted was people's opinions, nobody has to justify them to anybody disagreeing either, I'm just curious about how people will react.

Now I better understand why they call it WoW: the rpg, or any other computer game.

I'm curious what the appeal is to people to play such games with pen and paper.

Have they sufficently beefed up the monsters and campaigns so that there is that feeling of concern about making it out of the battle alive, or is going to be more like bashing in a computer game with multiple save and reset states?

I wonder then - was the Book of Nine Swords a World of Warcraft DnD then? There were usable melee powers in that game too. Or maybe Fading Suns or White Wolf games - are they WoW the RPG?

The feeling of fun. And if you're having a warrior, also usefulness - finally you aren't overshadowed by the wizardly types.


Yes, they did. Despite all the stuff with minions, the sample battles we were allowed to read about were really challenging and difficult when they were supposed to be.

Funny. WoW doesn't have saving and resetting. You're thinking about more standard cRPGs... like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, that use actual 2nd edition DnD mechanics.

And don't use the word "bashing" please.



Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I'm just removing a few misconceptions that people have about 4th Ed. So that their opinions will be less biased on untruthful material.

I know I'm semi-double posting (2 days have passed already), but here are some more details I missed in my first posts and would like to add to make things more clear:

-You get powers, but you still can do "normal" stuff in combat like bull rush or grapple. There is no stupid "I can't do it because I don't have the appropriate power" mentality - powers are for feats of extraordinary ability. And there are still feats too - in fact, you get even more of them in 4th Ed, one per 2 levels.
-There is still plenty of options for nonstandard characters. To use Daganev's example - want to be a wizard who breeds hounds? Your skill level is already pretty high without doing anything, worth 1/2 of level +int (or wis, I forgot) modifier. Not high enough for you? Burn a feat on Skill Training (Nature) for a +5 bonus. That's almost all skill training does, by the way - it's a requirement for some feats or paragon paths, and some very specific actions require skill training, but it's usually only a +5 bonus. Good but not necessary to perform an action. Still not good enough? Slap Skill Focus for a +3 atop of that.
-Wizards aren't as powerful as they used to be. They still have plenty of CC (crowd control), but it's much easier to shake it off now - DnD is no longer a game where one failed saving throw means you die because The Wizard made you permanently scared/stupid/slow/feeble/unconscious/blind/dead.
-Multiclassing is much more limited. I do not like it but I understand the decision - all classes are extremely front-loaded, so taking a dip in ANYTHING would cause you to be vastly more powerful than a one-class character. Instead, you take feats to replace your powers with some other class's powers.
-No more prestige classes. Instead, you get Paragon Paths that start at level 11. Because, if you already didn't know it, the three new "tiers" of DnD are Hero (levels 1-10), Paragon (11-20) and Epic (21-30).

It's a valid complaint for players not to like this change.

Gosh, we had that in the D&D game for almost 35 years of existence. How sad that we didn't know we weren't having any fun playing in the Tomb of Horrors. (I hate the way the new team is marketing D&D as having all these "problems" that we didn't know existed).

In fact, Necromancer Games is working on bringing this stuff back in their Advanced Players Guide. I have a feeling it will be a very popular supplement.