Book Price Comparisons
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 Good financial deal.... still... just say no... OK....... I really REALLY REALLY wanted to love this game. To be honest I've been a sucker for every incarnation of DnD that's come out. I liked all of em in their own way. I prebought this one and every 'pre-book' they've put out... We were all so eager for this new incarnation. It read so well. I can't believe this, but this game has actually managed to depress me!! I HAVE played it. Just spent three hours playing, in fact. When we finished the party reported that they had the distinct feeling that we had just played a board game version of WOW. Now we all LOVE WOW in our gaming group.. but that's NOT what we sat down to play around a table. We saw nothing 'quick' or 'streamlined' about the gaming experience. We moved pieces around a board adhereing to movement rules and 'squares' for this and that in a fashion that reminded me way too much of the old 'Heroes Quest', albeit a complicated version! Were the game mechanics good? Yes. Why did I give it a 'one star'? Because whilst the game is a good miniature warfare game it seemed to rob the flavor of DnD. The character creation was extrememly confined and the selections were limited. Gone was the ability to customize your character to the point that you actually felt like you had something unique. You will feel as if WOC is controlling the direction your character takes. The game DEMANDED a board and game pieces.. I've always felt that DnD's flavor relied on the 'minds eye', which is so much more colorful in my head than staring at plastic pieces on a piece of cardboard. I do realize that the 'original' DnD was just that, a wargame with a fantasy element. But I feel it evolved into so much more... I guess we've 'returned to our roots'... so why do I feel like we climbed back into the primordial ooze?! A great deal of the time the magic users felt like they were 'hitting the hot button key'. They had one or two actions that they relied on every round to cause the maximum amount of damage. No inovation or imagination. Everything was geared towards 'how does this directly effect combat'. The DM's guide isn't that bad. Reminds me a LOT of the first edition book. Information on how to be an effective dm, traps, dungeons, and artifacts. Not what 'thirders' would expect, but not bad. The Monster Manual is awful. A third of the pictures are just rehashed from all the previous Monster Manuals. The book is concerned with stats so you can play your miniature game effectively. Again.... great if your into miniature gaming. The ecology and culture information is virtually non-existant. Make all the arguments you want about this now being in the pervue of the DM.. the honest answer is that WOC is being lazy. You have a vast variety of stats to place against your carefully created stats, but very little flavor to guide you in roleplaying the encounters. I have read that the streamlined combat will enhance the rolplaying as you'll have more time available.... that was really exciting.. too bad this wasn't the case. Going to miniatures and a combat board, whilst carefully figuring out where your party and the encounter is, everytime combat arose was time consuming. You'll also notice that you'll have to change the map everytime, of course, which is also time consuming. If you LOVE miniature wargaming. If Warhammer is something you daydream about.... this is the game for you! As a miniature game experience it ranks a three or four... If you love games that take place in your head fired by limitless imagination then your probably going to be disappointed. I really feel like power gamers are going to LOVE this game and probably flame me for my remarks. The game is geared towards being 'godlike'. I'm not knocking this. If you love powergaming and twinking then this is DEFFINITLEY the game for you. To each his or her own. You should buy it immediately... and keep DnD fiscally sound enough to perhaps manage an inevitable rewrite that might restore my faith. Ironically I'll be keeping my set... I think it'll make a great board game for those rare nights when I just wanna run through dungeons killings things and working off frustrations. According to the DMG I don't even need a DM to do this..... Sound like any RPG you ever heard of???? No story teller... no RPG. Just another board wargame.. albeit a pretty good one. Good day! Goodbye Roleplaying- Hello WOW Light I had high hopes for a new edition of D&D, but rather than creating a new platform for roleplaying, 4th edition is staking out a very particular piece of ground- High fantasy that plays like WOW. 4th edition is nothing more than a tabletop combat game. I suppose roleplaying has become Passe'. On the plus side, they've eliminated (as near as I can see so far) most of the negative penalties in the game. For instance, rather than have a -4 to use a skill untrained, all skills are set to a base 0, and getting formal training in a skill puts it at +5 (which exactly balances out the difference between a -4 penalty and having one rank). They've also reduced the skill list drastically. In some ways a good thing, and in other ways not. You can no longer have a Rogue who is good at pickpocketing, but never learned about traps. Anyone with the skill has an equal talent in all areas. And all the flavoring/roleplaying skills are dumped completely (playing an instrument, engineering, and so forth). I actually do like the concept of making wizard able to crack off elemental type magic quickly in combat, but made all other magic rituals. The concept mind you, in practice it is vastly overpowered. Casting all day long? No problem. You'll NEVER get tired. Forget trying to play in a setting that feels like a real world- now ALL worlds are WOW, just without the graphics and sound effects. Thanks to the up-powering of the wizards, all of the other character classes seem beefed up to match. For instance, Paladins are much flashier in 4th edition. Just about everything they do has a magical glow to it, and they're much more effective healers right out of the box than in 3.5. Combat is streamlined, another good concept. But then they go and ruin it by giving EVERYONE special attacks that slow things down again. There are no simple strikes for damage, every strike has it's attendant special effects. Overall, from what I've seen thus far, the game is far more attuned to combat than more rounded, roleplaying characters, and is embedded in a VERY high magic setting. If you want this game to expand your roleplaying, buy something else. I would have thought after all these years, D&D would have grown as a game and become a better and more useful platform for roleplaying. Maybe streamline all of those unnecessarily complicated rules and create something elegant and useful. How wrong I was.  I concur I have to say, I have heard many complaints about this new system and having read it I can agree on many points: 1 - Too Easy. I agree, having max hit points as default on your first hit die makes surviving level 1 far too easy, you should have to roll every level up to 9th (giving you a chance of 1hp at level 1), then get fixed hp after that. And what's with this -10 on death's door rule? Heroes are supposed to die at 0, to keep the drama and seriousness of the game intact. After all, how is it believable to have someone collapse and nearly die but recover? Death's door should have been an optional rule. 2 - Too powerful. Absolutely, especially with this new damage reduction system. What? It should require at least a certain level of enchantment on a weapon to even hit a Tanar'ri, but now someone without the proper level of weapon actually has a chance of hurting them! And the multiple attacks, goes right from 1 to 2 attacks, and up to what... 4?! Where did 3/2 go? 3 - Too Simple. Definitely too simple a system, they replaced THAC0 with some kind of attack bonus, and now the higher your attack the better. No no no... THAC0 is supposed to be there as a nearly indecipherable task to weed out new players and stupid people. Really, do we want anyone but the math geeks playing our game? Oh, and they also condensed down saving throws and once again they made higher better. Now there's no difference between saving against a fireball from a staff and the fire from a dragon's breath weapon. No idea why they did this. 4 - Classes too similar. Oh man, way too similar. Everyone has an attack bonus now, and gets multiple attacks. What?! The warrior classes are supposed to be better at fighting here people, why does the thief (now called rogue of all things, way to kill the tone and style of the game guys) get multiple attacks at almost the same rate as the fighter? Having more attacks and access to weapon bonus from added proficiencies is what make the fighter special, now everyone can do it. Oh! And they got rid of non-weapon proficiency tables, and replaced them with a bad skill system. It might cost a bit more, but a character can have skills not from their list, and advance them every level instead of by +1 each time they invest another non-weapon proficiency in it (which fighters should be getting 1 of every 5 levels mind you). 5 - Trying to be a video game. I can see it, seriously. Before you know it, they'll probably be making games based on this new version too. And the ability to have ranks in whatever skill you want, or be proficient in more than 2-5 weapons starting? Definitely a video game idea. I like my D&D classic style thank you, and less of this new video game feel. AD&D 2e Forever! Wait... what? We're talking about 4th edition arriving after 3rd? Oh, my mistake. Sorry, just I had really bad deja vu from hearing a lot of the complaints out there. Forgot it wasn't 2000, and we weren't complaining about the change from AD&D to 3rd Edition. After all, I've heard most of this before. 4e? Oh yeah, 4e is great. ^_^ (apologies to anyone who took this seriously, just trying to be funny in a review about a game intended to sit down and have fun with) Caveat: wait for the mandatory revision! A lot of reviewers have focused on more of the innocuous information not contained in the books, e.g., druids, gnomes, etc. This information is less important because there will be books published in the future containing these races, classes, etc. Also, shelling out $20 or more for a book shouldn't be reproached when one compares the prices to the cost of a movie. However, shelling out any money for a broken system that will either be repaired dramatically in the following year, or remain broken seems like a waste to me. I promise you, nothing in the Monsters Compendium will stand a round against the builds that one might even accidentally create from the PHB. It used to be dangerous to be an adventurer, now it's a walk in the park. To be more specific, there are many builds that could solo even the most powerful monsters. If you do buy the book, request that your DM multiply the monsters' HP by 10; that should eliminate the one round kills for the most obvious builds. If you want examples, consult the official forums for the 4.0 system. You'll find many of them there. | |||||||||||||
