I have read the core rulebooks for Dungeons and Dragons 4th. Edition. Over the next couple weeks, I expect the core books to fall into other gamers’ hands as well. Naturally, with the release of a new edition of the most popular RPG in the world, there is going to be a lot of controversy. Some players are going to enjoy the changes made, while others will reject them and stick with their old editions (especially if they have made significant investment in additional materials for the game).

I have read the Player’s Handbook twice over, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual once each. Right off the bat, the very first thing I looked for in each core book was the dedication to E. Gary Gygax. While the dedication is (as promised) in the books, it appears as italicized text at the very bottom of the credits page. This is easily missed by someone not looking for it, and I am frankly disappointed. I had expected that the dedication would get it’s own page within the first three pages, in very large bold print. However, I can let it slide given that the dedication had to be added to the books with very short notice.

The presentation of the material in all three books is, to say simply, very clean. At first glance you can tell that things are organized neatly, with convenient “stat blocks” for important detailed information. From one perspective, this is an improvement over the presentation in the 3.x players guides as it may be easier for novices to find information quickly. At the same time, the core books feel extremely sterile. I absolutely loved the style of the 3.x core books, since it felt like everything fit together. The 4E books are basically info dumps on white pages devoid of personality, with generic fantasy art slapped here and there to try to make it feel like D&D. Some of the art is good by itself, but it just doesn’t flow together the way the 3.x manuals did.

The most important thing, however, are the rules presented. While the absolute kernel of the mechanic is the same (roll a d20 and add modifiers), a lot has changed regarding the races, classes, and how they achieve their abilities. The first big negative, in my opinion, is the core races presented in the book. Gnomes and Half-Orcs are removed in favor of Dragonborn, Tieflings and Eldarin (basically a redundant Elf+ race). This is, in my opinion, and blatant move to replace races that were seen as less popular (though I recall plenty of players choosing gnomes) with ones that are seen as “cool” to the MMO crowd. The players handbook even goes to the length of suggesting to play a Dragonborn if “you want to look like a dragon.” These races are easily the first thing I’d house rule out as a DM. The only saving grace to these choices is that rules for gnomes as a player race are in the back of the Monster Manual, though there is a little fleshing out that needs to be done to make them on par with the beloved 3.x gnome.

The next big area of change are the class choices. Barbarians, Druids, Bards, Monks and Sorcerers are no longer available, in favor of the Warlock and the Warlord. I was no fan of the Monk class being a core class in an RPG based on medieval Europe, but I feel that WOTC severely dropped the ball with leaving the other classes out in favor of classes that (as with the races) were basically included to appeal to the MMO crowd. The 3.x sorcerer was somewhat redundant, in my opinion, but they could have easily left in druids and bards, which are both important classics.

The classes work differently than before, in many cases. While martial based characters may enjoy some new abilities, playing a spell caster has been severely reduced not only in skill it takes to play, but also in flavor. WOTC has, for example, done away with almost everything a cleric can do which made them awesome in 3.x. Aside from one feat you can take, it makes absolutely no difference what deity your cleric serves. There are no more domains or difficult decisions to make about what spells to prep. The DMG even goes so far to as to strongly imply that the only difference between a good cleric and evil cleric is that the evil cleric abilities glow with dark energy rather than holy energy.

The Wizard is a complete shadow of it’s former self, and mostly resembles a 3.x sorcerer. It is now a walking artillery cannon, not the master of esoteric arcane knowledge it used to be. I was all for some tweaking to the spells and abilities to rebalanced the classes at each level. However, Wizards’ solution was to take everything that made spell casters cool and chuck it out the window, rather than actually trying to tweak the classes.

There are a few good things with this edition. However, most of these could have easily been rolled into a 3.75 and fixed a lot of problems with 3.x without destroying the flavor it had. For example, the stat bonus increases at level up have been adjusted to give the characters more ability bonuses than before. This was a good way of solving the fact that they want to make the game more about the characters themselves than the gear. Disenchanting of items into base components to enchant other items with is also a decent idea, however, it isn’t one that requires the other changes.

4E is definitely a playable system, and mechanically is pretty solid, do not get me wrong on that. It is not an unplayable abomination by any means, though some veteran gamers are calling it such. The problem is, it is very different from 3.x in overall feel, and the D&D I am used to playing. The rules are greatly simplified, and it feels more like an MMO on paper. Fewer options, cookie-cutter classes, alignment doesn’t really matter, even less emphasis on actual role playing… I guess it is the cost of making the game playable to someone who can’t read past a 4th. grade level. I really can’t blame WOTC for wanting to expand their player base, so it makes sense from a business perspective.

I think I can sum things up like this: I played 2E for many years, and enjoyed it despite the many faults. When I cracked open the 3E PHB for the first time, what I saw was a lot of necessary clean up and polish to the rules. It still felt like the same game I had been playing, just updated. 4E feels like a radically different game.

For those who have found that 4E is not to their liking, or who simply like having lots of options as I do, Paizo Publishing has a great solution. It is called Pathfinder. This is essentially an update to the existing 3.5 edition rules (thanks to the d20 SRD), recognizing that many players would like some fixes to 3.5 without dumbing down the game like 4E does. I encourage every RPG fan to check it out, especially those who dislike 4E or do not want to see their 3.x materials go to waste.