4ereviews' review of 4e Combat says:

First, traditional numerical conspiracy theory. since Shift-4 is $, the dollar sign… Shift-1 is ! which is the exclaimation point of 1st Edition arriving on the scene, the creation, the wellspring. Shift-2 is @, where it’s at, many of us old-timers played the hell out of 2nd Edition in various forms, including the Gold Box computer games. Shift-3 is #, where the designers used number crunching to bring back balance to the game we all love…

So if 1st Edition was ! (an exclamation), 2nd Edition was @ (where it’s at), 3e was # (number crunching) and 4e is $ (all about makin’ money for Wizards), will Fifth Edition be percentile based?

Hey, I’m only askin’!

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I’ve written this and re-written the following five times so far, and each time my opinion of the new D&D 4e Players’ Handbook has got steadily worse.

But first, the good stuff.

4e is great. I love the whole idea of Powers. I like the new Classes, and am even starting to give the Dragonborn some love. Combat is cooler too. While combat encounters will take the same amount of time as one from Third Edition, the characters take more turns, quicker - so it feels faster. That’s a Very Good Thing! Yups, there’s a lot to like about 4th Edition. Give it a few years to supplant my 3e supplement collection, and it’ll be terrific.

But.

The Players’ Handbook is a train wreck.

I mean that both metaphorically and…. uhhh….. more metaphorically. It’s a train wreck because it’s a mess, but also just like a train wreck all of the important trainy parts are there, just strewn all over the place in a very untrainlike fashion. There’s bits of engine where you expect the driver’s compartment to be, the wheels are 300 yards away from their natural location (assuming trains were natural, and they’re not) and the driver is… well, let’s not talk about the driver. It’s better that way.

Ok, enough of the metaphor. I’m sure you get the idea.

Hmmmm. I ought to put in a disclaimer about now, and a little explanation. I’ve RPG’d for roughly as long as RPG’ing has existed as a hobby. I’ve played a metric shedload of different games that all promise to be the next big thing - some of which were, most of which weren’t. I’m no more tied to 3rd Edition than I was to Rolemaster, HERO, GURPS, Bunnies & Burrows or pretty much anything else that’s crossed my path along the way. I certainly don’t think that change is always a good thing, but it’s frequently necessary. When it comes, evolution is almost always better than revision by a completely different design team. Compare Classic Traveller with Traveller:The New Era if you want proof.

In short, I’m not some 3e grognard fanboi who doesn’t like 4e just because. Heck, I do like it. But I don’t like the PHB. Here’s why.

Top level, the PHB ticks all the boxes - there’s a rather spiffy introduction, chapters of Character Generation, Races, Classes, Feats, Skills, Combat and more. It’s great to see magic items in the PHB too, emphasising further the the PHB is the go-to rulebook whether you’re generating characters at 1st level or 25th.

What is there is so poorly referenced, badly structured and just downright lacking that it’s beyond a joke. When you’re seeing commenters on other reviews suggesting using sticky tabs to mark pages like that’s a good thing (no, you’re fixing what’s broken!) or that it gets easier to find things with practise. Well, duh. That’s true whatever the system, no matter how good or bad it is.

One of the important parts of any rulebook is that it has to be easy to find stuff. This game needs a Glossary, bad. It needs a bigger, better index. The one-page index is already a joke among my players. In comparison, the 3.5e PHB has a damned good 3 page index and 11 page glossary. That’s 14 whole pages of frickin’ useful in-game essential goodness missing from the 4e PHB. My impressions are that the PHB designers spent so long congratulating themselves for making such an awesome game, they forgot to actually write the damned thing. Ah well.

Also, the Powers are completely and utterly all over the place, and - get this - they're not listed in the Index!!!!. FFS people, what’s so wrong with putting all of the Powers in a chapter together in alphabetical order then using page references and lists when needed. That’s how Skills and Feats works, after all! The number of times my players have played Hunt The Power in the PHB already is beyond a joke. If you can’t even get this right, give us a fucking index. It’s not too much to ask.

The Character Class chapter is a joke. It’s over 120 pages long, of which 80% is a listing of Powers sorted (if you could call it that) by class and level. That’s ok-ish when you’re generating a Fighter, but less than friendly when you’re mid-game and want to double check a Range. What would have been so wrong with having a Character Class chapter containing, y’know, Character Classes and putting another Chapter listing all the Powers? Jeez.

When it comes to actually creating characters, Chapter Two is just as messy as it tries to serve double duty explaining how to play the game and the steps involved generating a character at the same time. Not good, not good at all. Separate and inform first, then provide the means. It’s no good showing Powers with damage calculations when they’re not explained until much later in the book. Why the heck this book was allowed out in it’s current structure, gawd only knows.

Then there’s Powers.

Powers are the single most significant change to the game. They grant abilities to every class which are usable at-will, per encounter or daily. Every class gets 2 at-will, 1 encounter and 1 daily Power at first level (the Wizard inconguously gets 2 dailies but has to select which one to use each day), but there’s so fucking few of them to choose from it’s laughable. Look, if you’re going to offer a whole new meta-game system, jump in with both feet.

Here’s a quick head-to-head.

1st level Cleric in 3e can pick from a total of 37 0- and 1st level spells, using just the Core Rules alone, plus their Domain spell. A 4e Cleric chooses 2 at-wills from - get this - 4 Powers then has 4 each of encounter and daily Powers to pick 1 each. That’s 12 in total of which they get 4 (5 if Human). It’s the same story for all of the other Classes - there’s just nowhere near enough Powers in the book. As a Core Rule book if should have easily double the number of Powers, right there and ready to use.

Here’s the thing. Restructure the book and remove duplicated Powers and you’ll have room for more. Take out the page-and-a-half double spread artwork at the beginning of each chapter and you get back 15 whole feckin’ pages. With an average of 10 Powers per page, that’s one hundred and fifty new Powers in the same pagecount we’ve got now, just by taking out the spurious padding artwork.

Then there’s Rituals. And frankly, I don’t know why they bothered.

Rituals are kinda like Powers except they take longer to use, might have a longer duration and cost cold hard cash to use. Oh, and they’re tucked right at the back of the book (y’know, where the damned glossary should go!!) like the embarassing afterthought they are. Here’s a thought. Instead of tacking another mechanic into the mix, why not just make ‘em Powers that are usable per week, per month or whatever. This means they could go into that Powers chapter that’s missing, meaning more room for more Powers as there’s no need for a crappy explanation for a crappy subsystem.

I reckon with restructuring, loss of spurious artwork, duplicates and the rules for Rituals there’d be room for at least another 250 Powers - that’s 30 more per Class. Perfect.

Sure, I know that the limited number of Powers is designed to get us to buy more books from Wizards tofill in the gaps, but here’s the thing. I'm not stupid. The 3e PHB contained hundreds of spells, yet I still bought the Spell Compendium when that came out because it’s a great product. I’m not gonna buy more Wizards’ stuff just to patch up existing holes in the game that have been put there intentionally. This isn’t Shareware where you’re offered a crippled version of the product to tempt you to buy the full product. I bought the book, so don’t short-change me dammit!

If PHB II is going to contain Powers from sources other than Arcane, Divine and Martial, filling up the holes left by the loss of the Barbarian, Bard and Monk in the PHB then it’s going to be a while before we get access to the number of Powers that should have been in the PHB in the first place. Sheesh.

As an aside - I don’t mind the loss of those three classes much, really. What’s annoying is that there aren’t enough Powers to be able to simulate them effectively with the existing Classes as a stop-gap. Give me Powers right in the PHB geared toward Unarmed combat, Raging and some Divine music-based Powers and I’d be a happier man.

Going down to the nitty-gritty of the rules themselves we’ve not played enough to take it apart sufficiently to comment much, but a few things stand out.

If you’ve played as long as I have, Page 38 couldn’t have shouted out more if it was circled in red and triggered a siren when opened. That’s the page for the Eldarin Race and contains the dreaded Fey Step Power. I know I’ve ranted about this before, but I’ll briefly explain why it’s so broken and why it has to be nerfed to being a Daily Power, immediately.

In short, Fey Step is a 25’ teleport ability usable once per encounter. They sounds all fine and cool on paper, but it’s a Very Bad Thing Indeed. Per Encounter Powers can be used at most once every 5 minutes. That’s 288 times per day. See the problem yet? Even if you enforce 8 hours of sleep, every Eldarin character could teleport up to 192 times per day. Do the math. In comparison, a 3rd Edition Wizard could cast Dimension Door (it’s nearest (but longer ranged) equivalent) once per day - when he reaches 7th level.

192 (or 288) times per day at 1st level, compared to once at 7th level. Oh, please.

That Fey Step means you can’t put your Eldarin in jail. You can’t have them stuck at the bottom of a pit trap. You can’t have a corridor blocked by a 20’ chasm. You can’t….. awe heck, I’m sure you get the idea. If you end up needing to meta-game around a given Power, that Power is broken. Changed to being a Daily Power it’s acceptable as this puts the choice back onto the player - do they use their Fey Step now, or save it for later? That’s tactical, and less open to abuse.

The equipment list is very limited too, lacking several of the core essentials for any dungeon adventure. Where’s the 10’ poles (personally, I prefer quarterstaves anyhow) and flasks of oil? And why the heck is a Rapier not on the list of Proficiencies for Rogue when they’re entire Power style is based upon swashbuckling? Heck, they can use Piercing Strike and Riposte Strike, but only have melee proficiencies with dagger and shortsword. What gives?

Finally, many of the 3e combat Feats have translated to 4e Powers meaning they’re locked to a certain class and only accessible through use of a multi-class Feat. That’s a fiddly mechanism when all you want to do is to let your Paladin use Cleave! There should be a group of General Powers which are open to all, regardless of Class provided the level requirements are met.

Overall, my impression of the PHB is that we’re being short-changed. The poor layout and structure means there’s just not enough Powers to make character generation sufficiently flexible. The gaps in the equipment list and downright useless Rituals section just don’t help what should be a showcase book for a darned good game.

The crazy thing is that Wizards’ should be able to make this a stunning product. They’ve certainly got the experience and people who can do this, because they've done it before. The Star Wars RPG contains the entire system in one book covering one of the most iconic settings of all time complete with new-player friendly (and GM useful!) starting character templates. d20 Modern is another one-book system that’s pure brilliance. Surely they could have made a better D&D PHB than this.

Apparently not.

RPG

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Retro TV Barbarians R Us!

This post about D&D Fight Club over on How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I’ve been thinking about how we could turn 4th Edition D&D into a game we could actually play - with the minimum effort, of course! Y’see, 3rd Edition D&D pretty much nails it when it comes to our fantasy RPG needs with it’s hundreds of classes & races and thousands of fully stated critters. 4th Edition is even more of a combat engine and less of a role-playing game to the point where it barely needs a GM at all. All of the decisions are right there on the character or monster stats, and it’s 100% battlemat and minis driven. That’s good for combat, but creates an almighty disjoint between the combat encounters and the immersive role-playing parts of the game. What to do?

Fight Club!

Taking it a little further, Gladiatorial Fight Club!

I’ve cracked open my much loved copies of Dungeon 96 and Dragon 303 complete with the Arena battlemat. I’m going to plonk it straight into Ptolus as the scenario and location is an almost perfect fit for the Oldtown Arena from page 315 (Districts vol 2, pg 45) so the players have a familiar setting. Players generate 3 characters each and the players can issue challenges to each other and will gain Fame Points for victories in the Arena. Refusing a challenge costs 3 Fame Points for cowardice!

Each combat is at least 2-on-2 and can be between multiple players. For example, one player could pit his three characters against two other players’ toughest gladiators, or even battle 6 against 6 with four players in a spectacular free-for-all. Fame Point rewards and Spice (twists to the normal Arena rules) are agreed beforehand. The winning team splits the Fame Points for victory evenly in addition to any gained in-combat for signature moves and crowd-pleasing stunts. XP are awarded for defeating opponents as per 4e rules.

I’ll be playing characters too as just another player (yay!) but will also steadily advance the plot as per the Pandemonium in the Veins scenario, allbeit at a much slower pace. There’ll also be a few special monster and NPC battles in there too, for a little variety. I’ll post up a league table for the players so they can see who’s heading up the Hall of Gladiatorial Fame. Hehe.

Hopefully this will get us more familiar with 4e’s quirks and foibles and well as give us a chance to experiment with different class and race combos without feeling too much loss if a gladiator bites the sand. We’ll also be able to work with 4e’s emphasis on teamwork and tactics too so we’re all geared up when 4e is all growed up and finally able to replace 3e as our key fantasy game. That’s a way off yet though.

So what do you think? 4e D&D Gladiator Fight Club? Good idea, or what?

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What do you get if you put together a 3.5e D&D adventure pack designed specifically for GMs who are pressed for time, a style that’s reminiscent of Ptolus (ie, awesome) combined with 4th Edition’s layout and encounter structure, all for the discounted price of $7.50?

Trouble in Tallreed Waters, that’s what, and it’s bloody brilliant!

If I were being lazy, I could say that Trouble is what the Keep on Shadowfell tries to be (but for 3rd Edition) and leave it at that, but what kind of review would it be if I didn’t go into some kind of detail, eh?

Trouble in Tallreed Waters is a 52-page full-colour PDF from Myth Merchant Press written by Steve Muchow. Full credit goes to him as, apart from the proofreading, he’s responsible for the writing, cartography, layout, cover and whole enchilada (Mmmmm….. enchilada……). Where was I? Oh yes…..

In essence this is a 1st level adventure that includes battlemats (lots of battlemats!), pre-generated characters, fold-up paper miniatures and tokens all wrapped around the mystery of the PC’s missing benefactor. There’s 6 key encounter areas and a large woodland area to explore, with full battlemats provided for the combat encounters. These are great quality and large too - the Woodland Path alone takes up 9 pages of the PDF. These are to be laid in a 3x3 grid, wih another encounter area filling another 12 pages to make a 4x3 layout. They’re suitably generic too, so that’s a fair chunk of the whole PDF being a re-usable resourse even when the adventure is done.

Here’s the only place where I could nitpick about Trouble - I’d have liked to see the battlemats collated at the end or in a separate PDF so there can easily be printed (along with the paper minis) all together on thicker card. It’s a little fiddly to sort out what’s to be printed on plain paper and what needs something stronger. Also, it would help to have a small reference somewhere unobtrusive on the battlemat to make it simpler to lay them out, especially when they’re all jumbled out of order mid-game (oopsy!). Having 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, etc in the corner would have helped immensely!

One thing that the players liked in particular about Trouble was the pre-generated characters. They’re each laid out on a single sheet of paper designed to be folded through the middle to create a kind of stand-up character sheet. This gave each PC a kind of GM screen of their very own which they thought was great. It also simplified my job as GM ‘cos I could see the player’s character name and key abilities during play too. I’ll definitely be re-using this idea. What can I say? We’re easily pleased!

As this adventure is designed for 4-6 1st level characters, I’d have liked to see 6 fully stated PCs available rather than just 4. This would give the party more choice if there’s only 4 players, and a full complement with a party of 6. If Steve could find his way to posting more pre-generated characters up in the same style (please?!) either for free or Very Cheap, that would be a Very Good Thing. I know it’ll catch on.

Overall the layout is very clean indeed. It uses the two column + chatty sidebar style that made Ptolus so darned readable, but adds some excellent 4e touches into the mix. Even though this is 3rd Edition, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Monsters are straight out of 4th Edition because the statblock style is very similar. This is another Good Thing as it makes the GM’s job a lot easier mid-game. 4e style statblocks are much easier on the eyes! I like. Trouble also gets bonus points for actually putting the XP awards right there on the page, adjusted for number of characters. Awarding XP in Third Edition using That Damned Table from the DMG is horrible, and it’s great not to need it.

Great layout and design is all well and good, but what really matters is how it plays.

I’m going to avoid spoilers, but let’s just say this is one enjoyable adventure. Plotwise it’s about as simple as they come - another Good Thing! - involving a caravan train and a kidnapping. We ran through two of the full encounters in a single 3 hour session including start and setup with all of the players wanting to continue while we work out What To Do With 4e (see the next blogpost for details). There’s plenty of role-playing opportunities in this adventure too - the players spent almost an hour gaming the caravan train at the start of the session - and it’s a far cry from 4e’s top-heavy emphasis on badazz combat. In fact, this adventure is making us like Third Edition again. Not that we didn’t dislike it in the first place Trouble also introduces a new concept to the table with Skill Trials. These allow the players to approach a problem (for example, getting past an enchanted door) from several different directions. They do add something to the game, and I’d like to see more of them in future products from Myth Merchant.

One word of warning though - the second encounter is very tough indeed. I ended up using my own version of the Minion rules for the Goblin Scouts where they die with a single hit - effectively, they’re 1hp critters. As one of my players consistently rolled 1s and 2s for damage the entire night, it helped! Playwise, everything ran quickly enough with each combat involving lots of arm waving on each side. Good stuff.

Right now, the characters are resting up at the Giddy Ghost Inn, ready to face the rest of the adventure next week.

In all, Trouble in Tallreed Waters is a great, straightforward adventure that’s well suited to experienced gamers at the start of a fresh campaign and newcomers alike. The quality of the layout and completeness of the product (Paper minis! Right in the game!) make it stand out from the crowd. There’s a smattering of proofreading bloopers along the way - “Dediication”, “Qualies”, missing capitalization at the start of sentences, etc - but that’s not something I particularly notice nor care about during play.

If you want to take a look at Myth Merchant’s style without shelling out $7.50 (cheapskate!), take a look at the Giddy Ghost Inn as a free download from RPGNow. This is a standalone expansion to Trouble which provides full battlemats for the Inn along with Patrons, adventure seeds and rules for drinking competitions. And who doesn’t want those?!

Highly recommended!

RPG

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Over on his blog, Chris Pramas (god of Green Ronin and all things Good) rants about what’s wrong with the 4e PHB, and gets it spot on. He quickly puts to bed any detractors who think he may have ulterior motives for badmouthing a product from Wizards’. Perish the thought! He goes on….

My assessment after having the books for a few weeks: it fails.

I say this because ultimately the new Player’s Handbook is not a viable entry point for most new players. Now I know there are some entry products coming down the pipe, but to my mind a new player should be able to read the PHB and learn how to play the game. Entry sets come and go and stores may or may not have them in stock, but the Player’s Handbook will always be there. It is the cornerstone of the line, the book that sells better than all others. It should be approachable and friendly to new players.

4e is great, but the PHB is…. well, let’s say it’s less than perfect, for all the reasons Chris details. It’s not new player friendly, poorly laid out and lacks the essentials of decent examples, full length index or glossary.

Couldn’t put it better myself, really.

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Microlite, that is!

To celebrate Free RPG Day, Microlite20 is proud to release two more add-on genre settings for the smallest thing in d20 gaming!

If you like the idea of a complete Spy or Superhero role-playing game, for free, or want to see what all this Microlite20 fuss is all about, take a peek at our special Free RPG Day Microlite20 page

Happy Free RPG Day!

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HeroLab, now supports Mutants & Masterminds! Woohoo!

Here’s a quick generation of Bomb Girl (from memory), just to prove it’s all working fine. And it is. In fact, it’s bloody brilliant

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Bomb Girl. She makes things go boom with her mind.

With precious few exceptions, the greatest heroes from fiction can be summed up in a single line, and often they’re tied to a single schtick or special ability. For example, what made the original series of the Heroes TV series (here in the UK we’re about 700 episodes behind, so can’t comment beyond that) was that the characters were pretty ordinary people, each with just a single power. We could sum up enough about each one of them with a short line of text - cheerleader who can regenerate, senator who can fly, etc - and it gives us enough information to understand much of the character’s motivations, motives and personality. As the characters grew our perception of them developed too, but that original One Line Hero core remained the same, giving a sense of consistency to the series’ premise.

It’s not hard to find examples. There’s Will Smith’s character from I, Robot - technophobe cop, Robin Hood - noble leader of an outlaw band, or even Doctor Who - Time Travelling problem solver. Of course, all of the characters are much more complex than a single line can convey, but once you’ve identified the core, everything else falls naturally into place.

We can use this in our role-playing games too. Next time you’re generating a fresh character, find space on the sheet for a one line description, and where possible, write that first (ok, second, if you’ve got a name). This will help define the character in your mind, show what makes them different, and serve as a reminder how to play the character at the start of each session.

Once you’ve got the one line concept there’ll be plenty of questions that need anwsering. Some of these questions will be simple, but others are best answered as a part of the plot development in game.

For example, Bomb Girl pictured above is one of my favourite characters from our Mutants & Masterminds campaign. She can blow things up with her mind. That’s her one-line concept, but from that comes the questions “How?”, “When did she get this power?”, “Does it work in a vacuum?”, “How does this make her a hero?”, and “Doesn’t that make her very dangerous to have around?”. There’s plenty more questions, but that’ll do for now. Incidentally, the answers are “Technopsionics. The more complex something is, the bigger the bang”, “From birth. Her childhood consisted of wooden blocks in a very plain room”, “No”, “She was an anti-terrorist agent for Department 19. Now she works as part of a hero team and trusts no-one” and “Yes, very”.

In the world of D&D, a one line concept is the difference between your Elven Rogue and all the rest; it’s what makes your character stand out from the crowd. Perhaps she’s a Church Orphan with no concept of personal belongings, obsessively compulsive about how things work, or is seeking for The God Mark which could be engraved anywhere.

Here’s a few example one-line heroes for D&D just to get the juices flowing:

• Frustrated ex-Cleric who wants a more active role in purging evil
• Mercenary who fights and drinks to forget a recent horror
• Ex-cultist trying to atone for his sins
• Wife of an enslaved nobleman who only wants enough gold to purchase his release
• Exiled from the Feywild for breaking an unspoken taboo
• Lost the King’s Message and fears every soldier’s footstep
• Ex-apprentice of a vanquished evil Wizard
• Monkey given human form
• Time traveller from an ancient Empire now stranded in an unfamiliar land

While I haven’t suggested a Race or Class for these sample one-line heroes there’s usually an obvious choice, but sometimes it’s fun to choose the path less travelled. For example, the “Ex-apprentice of a vanquished evil Wizard” is most likely to also be a Wizard, but what if they’ve abandoned their spell-casting ways to take up the mantle of a Fighter, allbeit one (if you’re playing 4e) with the Arcane Initiate Feat to reflect their incomplete training and dark, dirty secret.

I’m sure you can think of more. There’s a one line hero in all of us, after all.

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So D&D’s new license has been released and it’s more restrictive than the near-as-dammit Open source OGL of Third Edition. Here’s the official link though I prefer the version currently on ENWorld's front page. Darn, it’s annoying I can’t link to daily posts on ENWorld. Get new software, people!

In short, it’s pretty much what we knew it would be. There’s links and references that third parties can use, but nothing like the access to raw usable crunch we players find so darned useful. Putting this into perspective though, we were very, very spoilt rotten with the OGL, and knew it was too good to last. Even so, Wizards’ are being darned generous with allowing other companies to build on what they’ve created and deserve applauding for that rather than barracking for taking stuff away. They didn’t need to do this at all, and could have kept everything to themselves, after all.

It’s still good, but not as good as the last good thing.

We gamers loved the OGL (and still do). It meant we could legally copy-and-paste text into our own nefarious adventures. We could use our computers to for easy reference, using sites such as http://www.d20srd.org/ for free, and have character generators like PCGen and Redblade to make our life easy. Instead, with 4e that’s all swallowed into the delayed black hole called DnDInsider which, let’s be honest, no one is really excepting to be much good. I hope to be proven wrong

What the 4e GSL does give us though is the opportunity for third parties to concentrate on making new stuff rather than padding books with existing content. I’m all for seeing adventures that just have monsters stated out as 2 Kobold skirmishers (MM167), 2 fire beetles (MM30), 1 stirge (MM248), XP 500 if it means more fluff and quality overall. Sure, it’s a bind having to flick the Monster Manual but the reality is there’ll be no shortage of unauthorized, non-GSL approved goodies out very shortly that’ll solve that, even if DnDInsider doesn’t let you build and print customized encounter stat blocks yourself. I dunno whether it will, and care too little about it to check.

In fact, my main concern about the GSL is with Wizards’ new definition of Core Rules. Y’see, in Third Edition, Core Rules was just that - the PHB, MM and DMG. Everything else wasn’t. Now, the 4e Core Rules is those three, plus every other PHB, MM and DMG they plan to release, ever, and they’re all covered by the GSL.

So what happens if Necromancer Games releases a Tome of Horrors 4e (looking increasingly unlikely) with stats for a Krenshar, say, and it’s also gets an entry in Monster Manual II at a later date? Have Necromancer violated the GSL retroactively?

It just seems so poorly thought out, and a hefty chunk of folks online are already picking holes in it.

But it’s still good. Honest

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Here’s the thing. You’ve got shelves-upon-shelves of 3rd Edition D&D material ranging from adventures to campaign settings and game supplements then along comes 4th Edition just like we knew it would.

What do you do?

At first glance, there’s two choices - jump, or not jump. Either ignore all the hoohar and stick with the 3rd Edition you’re playing now or make a clean break with a fresh campaign and put your 3rd Edition books on eBay. The first option is the most appealing to gamers who’ve already invested heavily in the game while the latter appeals more to folks new to the hobby and Wizards’ itself who would much rather you’re 100% behind 4th Edition from the start. There is another way though, and all it takes is a small change in perception.

Why not use the 4th Edition core books as supplements to your current 3rd Edition game?

Think of the books as roughly akin to the Book of Nine Swords part two and cherry pick the best of Fourth Edition for implementation in your current campaign. This gives you the best of both worlds - access to the thousands of existing published Monsters, hundreds of Classes and Races and all those 3rd Edition resources you currently own, but with an extra layer of 4th Edition sparkliness.

Here’s a quick bluffer’s guide to the highlights that using such a crossbreed will bring.

Starting level & Powers

As we’ve already ascertained in ThirdAndFourthHeadToHead, First Level in 4th Edition is roughly equal to Fourth level from 3rd Edition (follow that? Good!), so if you’re starting a new campaign or running a one-shot begin with 4th level characters but only assign equipment equal to 1st level. Allow the characters to select 2 at will, 1 encounter and 1 daily Power from the 4e PHB and gain new Powers as they advance in level. Trough through the ENWorld forums and select from other classes for classes not currently supported by 4th Edition. Replace the Wizard class entirely with the 3rd Edition Sorcerer but allow Wizard-style Specialization. Sorcerer Illusionists rock!

Playing using the 3e rules gives you back your Monk, Barbarian and specialist spell-casters, and means the players have access to the hundreds of cool Races we’ve grown to know and love, so that player who loves his Catfolk Ninja will be happier still when they can add new Powers to their character sheet.

As the characters are 4th level they have access to a whole range of Level Adjusted Races so encourage diversity. This will emphasize the ramped-up power level of the game and re-inforce that you’re not so much playing 4e, as 3e++

When it comes to Powers, several of them replace or replicate 3e Combat Feats - most notably Cleave. In this case, favour the Power but allow it to be taken by any martial-oriented Class. A Paladin with Cleave is great (and a weakness in 4e that this requires a multi-class Feat to achieve), but a Cleaving Sorcerer is out.

Where Feats exist in both 3rd and 4th Edition, select which best suits your style of play on a case-by-case basis, then stick to that decision. In general, favour the 4e variant to stay closer to that style of play. When you’re using Feats from supplements, consider making them Powers instead, especially if they seem overly powerful in comparison to the 3e Core Rules Feats. Many are.

Small characters such as Halflings will rejoice at the weapon-size rules from 4e, so use those and get rid of 3e’s different damage rules entirely. Now your Halfling can use any old dagger just fine, and wield a Longsword two-handed just as nature intended. As an aside, this makes treasure allocation much easier for the GM too!

Decide whether to use the 4e rules for Fort, Ref and Will. This largely depends on whether you want the players to roll the dice or prefer to handle this yourself. If you go the 4e route, use the calculation for the saves as per 3e then add 10 to the result.

As the characters advance, use the 3rd Edition advancement rules to calculate BAB, assign Feats, select Skills etc but grant new Powers as per 4th Edition. Where classes gain a special ability as per 3rd Edition, make that an ability usable at will, per encounter or daily depending on the intent and design of the power. Use post-it notes in your 3e PHB to show how the abilities become Powers and stick to your choice.. Your players won’t be happy if their Rogue can Sneak Attack once per encounter but that NPC Rogue is using it at will. Be consistent!

Use the 3e multi-classing rules, but keep a close eye on the number of special abilities (ie, new Powers) gained. If the character doesn’t have enough Power slots to fit the new Powers they’ll have to want a level or two before they gain all of the tricks of the new class.

When it comes to existing characters, grant them Powers appropriate to their level-3 and take away their multiple attacks. Some of their Powers slots will be filled with their current special abilities (converted to Powers) but there should be more than enough slots for them to gain kewl new stuff too. Drop in a world-changing scenario to explain the shift, and you’re done.

Combat

Use a battlemat for that 100% 4e feel, and implement the 4e movement rules where a square is a square whatever the direction. Optionally, say GoodbyeToTheGrid and allow the characters to move anywhere, anyhow for complete freedom of movement. Y’know, just like they do in computer games

To balance all of these kewl new Powers you’ve thrown at the players, remove multiple attacks from the game. This speeds combat up immensely and keeps the players on their toes as now they won’t be able to power nap while the whirling-dervish-of-death Ranger makes his umpteen attacks.

Use 4e’s rules for Bloodied and healing surges. This will keep the characters aliver for longer, and as necessary for many of their Powers. Use the 3e Weapon Proficiency rules, but roll criticals as per 4e. A natural 20 is maximum damage, though some weapons (see the 4e equipment table) are High Crit and do additional damage too.

Spells

Use the 3rd Edition spell system as Rituals are Rubbish. When the spellcasting character gains a level, allow them the option of gaining a spell as a Power instead and decide whether it’s to be at will, per encounter or daily. All spells now require attack rolls (goodbye auto-hit Magic Missile) but these can be against AC, Fort, Ref or Will - select and write a post-it note.

Monsters

Use all those 3e Monsters you know and love. Replace any special abilities with Powers and add new Powers to make the critters interesting. Use the 4e Minions rules too, so toss a handful of 1hp Monsters into every encounter. Assign XP and design encounters as per the 4e DMG page 56 rather than 3e’s convoluted process. A Monster’s Level should be roughly it’s CRx2 (I think - we need a better calculation for this), and adjust to suit.

When creating new monsters, use the 4e rules. They’re much, much better.

Why note just move to 4e?

If you’re making all this effort, why not just play 4e instead?

There’s several good reasons, top of the list being we may have existing campaigns we’re unwilling to sweep away. By bringing 4e elements into your game rather than wiping the slate clean we’re introducing the players to new concepts and playstyles gradually. This means that when they’re ready for a fresh start with the 4e rules wholesale (hopefully by which time the PHB II will have filled in a few gaping holes) they’re already familiar with the game.

Just as important is that 3e has a full System Reference Document complete with classes, monster stats, psionics and more. 4e on the other hand….. doesn't. Instead 4e has page references, definitions and elements useful for game designers but of little use to we ground-floor gamers. Ah well.

Finally, 3e isn't that broken, but it could benefit from a healthy dose of 4e sparkliness. By using the 4e Core Rules as a supplement to your existing 3e game, you’re adding a fresh coat of paint onto an already much loved game.

RPG

Comments on FourIntoThree

I spent a fair chunk o’ Sunday afternoon playing the sadly underrated X-Men Legends II for the Classic XBox with my boys (aged 6 and 9). It’s a great game when you want a multi-player masher of a game where you can beat up reams of bad guys without caring too much about the admitedly ropey storyline.

So far, I’d shown the boys how to kick and punch with the best of ‘em by hammering on the A and B keys, and I decided to ramp up their knowledge a little by introducing them to the Skills section of the game. This is where you can allocate powers and special abilities to each of the four buttons that can be used when the right trigger is pressed. They grok the concept immediately, and have a whale of a time picking each character’s abilities from a list of about 160 powers - most of which are tantalizingly locked until higher level. We’ve got Toad with Toxic Spit and Colossus maxin’ out with Demolition, and everything in between.

The game takes on a new dimension with our heroes burning Power Points like there’s no tomorrow, and my boys are hungry for more and bigger battles. Then their tactics change, and they start to use the powers that aid the whole party rather than the ones that make the biggest BOOM. P’s playing Sunfire, and his favourite tactic is to use the ability which sets all the character’s fists aflame, causing additional fire damage with every hit. H is playing Iceman, and he favours freezing the foes so they shatter when I (as Colossus) pound them hard.

That’s when I realize.

Holy crap, we’re playing 4th Edition D&D.

The boys had graduated from hit-then-hit-them-again to thinking tactically. At first, they were using Powers in every battle with the right trigger permanently down and attacking foes with their most expensive attacks, much like that first 4e D&D encounter where you burn your Daily Power against Kobolds (I’m looking at you, Mark!). They realize their mistake quickly enough, and favour the cheaper Powers to pound the bad guys without burning too many Power Points, even reverting back to their (zero cost) basic attack to finish off the rank-and-file. This is 4e’s at-will Powers at work, where they’re using their per encounter abilities to either soften up a tough foe, affect all of their enemies or empower the whole team. My boys are thinking tactically, saving up the biggest, most costly effects for the best moment. I’m ordered to use Colossus’ Demolition Power when we’re surrounded by mooks and the tide of battle changes. Sunfire goes Nova against a particularly tough foe. We’re playing as a team, rather than individual combatants.

Wizards’ have done a terrific job of translating this facet of computer games into a role-playing game. The look on the boys’ faces when they moved from simple combat to Power-based battles is akin to the look on my gamer’s faces when they realized the impact that the new Powers system has on the game.

It’s the future of D&D, and I love it.

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I realized something during a little playtest of Fourth Edition a few nights ago. It’s the small things that make the biggest difference.

Now, a lot has changed in the style and rules of D&D. The core Races have altered (goodbye Gnome, hello scaly dude), the Classes are different (Bards begone! I summon you, Warlord!) and the game has added a whole new layer of mechanics with it’s Powers.

At the same time though, much of the game is still the same. In fact, it could be argued that 4e hasn’t gone far enough and it should have made the jump to being the whole-scale point-buy system it’s slowly evolving into. But that’s a whole ‘nuther blogpost for another time.

What I realized is that one teeny tiny rule in the whole game has changed, and with it, it’s changed the whole game.

Diagonal movement, I’m looking at you.

Bear with me here. I’m not crazy, I swear. Here’s a quick recap by way of explanation.

In Third Edition, diagonal movement was calculated differently to standard up-down side-to-side movement. Instead of moving 3,4,5 or however many squares, diagonal movement was counted in multiples of 1.5, in some kind of wierd inaccurate homage to Pythagoras. That first square cost 1 “movement point”, the second cost 2, the third 1, the fourth 2, and so on.

One of the many things that 4e does right is fix that. Move one square in any direction, and it costs 1 square. Just adjust for terrain (difficult costs 2 per square), and you’re done.

So here’s the thing.

You don't need a grid any more!

Read that again, and let it sink in.

Just grab a ruler to measure the inches, and your minis can move anywhere, however the heck they want. No grid needed. Count each full inch of difficult terrain as 2 inches, and move front-of-base to front of base. Go ‘round corners by following the path, and allow free movement of 1” for the shift - the old 3e 5-foot step, reborn.

Getting rid of the grid means getting rid of the battlemat and boardgame mentality. It means that grey tablecloth (the one you washed with your socks by accident. Yes, that one) is your dungeon floor, with books marking dungeon walls. You’re out of Boardgame-land where you’re counting the movement and firmly into Wargame-land with all that entails. Freedom of movement, tactical use of terrain and pure, unadulterated old-school D&D goes back to it’s Chainmail roots fun.

Grab that ruler to check distances for range, blast radius and the like, or - if you’re feeling particularly wargamey - only allow measuring distances after the roll to simulate misjudged ranges.

Taking this a step further, it also means you can use figures of any scale. Grab those 6mm Fantasy Miniatures you’ve been drooling over (check out their 6mm fantasy Range, then faint at the prices - 4 Dark Elf Champions, £0.50. Wonderful!) and create an entire dungeon on your worktop. Set 1 square = 1cm, and you’re good to go. Brilliant! £11.00 will buy you an entire freaking army of 6mm minis - 250 to 300 minis, more than enough to populate your gaming for years to come! Sure, it’s using a wargaming mindset, but with 4e’s role-playing rules to keep the game centred on the heroes at all times.

That’s one heck of a change to the game.

And it’s all down to the way diagonal movement is calculated.

RPG

Comments on GoodbyeToTheGrid

Via the ever lovin’ BoingBoing:

This Roman-era d20 is up for auction at Christie's for a shade under $18,000.

Cool, or what?!

I reckon in honour of this fabulous hunk o’glass we all ought to generate a character using Roman Numerals just like they did back in the day. Perhaps this is where all those Type VI Demons originated.

Here’s by Roman age character, generated using Microlite20:

Alea Viginti Colosseus, Human Fighter-I

STR XVI, DEX XIV, MIND XII, Phys@V, others@II

hpXXII, AC XV (Studded leather)

Shortsword +IV, IdVI+III

Sling +III, IdIV

Now it’s your turn

RPG

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Every role-player should read this thread. 4e D&D + LEGO + 7 year-old = perfection.

It just doesn’t get better than this

RPG

Comments on SeventeenShadesOfAwesome

Thanks to the combined might of Tiscali and BT, we’ve been sans connection for the past 48 hours, which is fun. Especially if by “fun” you really mean “tearing your hair out with frustration as you’re trying to set up a new business and this is a very, very bad time to lose ‘net access”. In the end I’m shouting at some guy in Bangladesh. This has the desired effect, and we’re back online again. Customer care my hat.

But anyhow.

Amid visits to accountants, etc, I’ve read pretty much all of the 4e D&D Core Books and spent far too much time in Poser creating character portraits and concept art for the game including this rather nifty Tiefling Wizardess:

My laptop has been behaving itself with only one or two complete lock-ups per day, which is just about at the acceptable side of annoying.

When it comes to 4th Edition D&D I guess it all comes down to the question of whether it’s a better game than 3rd Edition, and the answer to that has to be a qualified yes. Take Powers out of the equation and you’ve a system with an improved (though entirely miniatures dependant) combat system, simpler Skills and better Feats. The choice of Races in the PHB isn’t my cup of tea, but the entries in the Monster Manual more than solve this. The game plays better and is more dynamic overall.

Then add in the Powers. The Powers system is brilliant - it adds a whole new dimension to the game which improves over what we had with 3rd Edition. The idea of at-will, encounter and daily abilities is a simple concept but it add so much to the game. Even my hard-core players who aren’t big fans of combat keep itching to crack skulls using their Powers, and they do a terrific job of enforcing and encouraging teamwork.

But.

There’s two problems with Powers, as presented in the PHB: there aren’t enough, and they aren’t varied. There’s too much emphasis on melee-based Powers - if you want to play a Fighter who specialises in missile combat, you’re completely left out in the cold - and too many Powers have the same mechanic with slightly different swishy effects.

Sure, the lack of Powers will be solved by throwing Yet More Cash at Wizard’s for more books, but it’s a problem that shouldn’t exist at all, and largely it could have been solved by fixing the PHB’s broken layout.

Here’s the thing: take the Powers out of the Character Classes chapter, collate ‘em and strip out the duplicates. Stick them in a chapter on their own so that the Classes chapter just contains the Classes themselves complete with a summary of available Powers. As it stands, with Classes chapter reads more like a huge list of Powers with a few pages about the Classes inserted at random. That’s messy. Fixing that will bring the Classes chapter in line with the Races section with a few pages per class, easy to check through to and make your selection, and bring Powers in line with Skills, Feats and Rituals (more on those, later) as more of a Rule Compendium resource that’s easy to check mid-game - especially if they take the Powers out of the other sections too. Having Powers slotted in the Races and Feats section where they’re mentioned is sloppy. Put a reference in there instead, and stick all the Powers together. The PHB layout is dumbass. There. I said it.

By collating and removing duplicates (and near-duplicates like all of the “Marked” Powers), we should be able to have 3 or 4 new Powers at 1st level for each class, with a couple more for each level above.

Then we have Rituals, and seriously, I don’t know why they bothered. Rituals is the new name for Spells, because Spells was taken. Rituals are kinda like Powers except they cost money to use and take longer to cast. There’s also ridiculously few of them listed in the PHB. Rituals would have been better handled daily/weekly or monthly-use Powers (continuing the Powers theme) that can only be used out of combat (or in-combat, with considerable difficulty). This would have eliminated an unnecessary mechanic, kept things consistent and meant more room for more Powers. As it stands, Rituals smacks of being too much of an afterthought to add anything meaningful to the game, and re-inforces the impression that this Edition of D&D was designed by committee.

Criticisms aside, I do like 4e, a lot. Perfect, it isn’t. But it’s a damned site better than it could have been. Which is nice.

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First, a bit of a clarification and a rant. Not necessarily in that order.

Life ain’t all black and white. It’s possible to like parts of something, yet at the same time criticize other elements; just like the Curate’s Egg, there’s good and bad in all things. If you think otherwise, stop watching so much TV/reading crappy tabloids and grow up.

On to the specifics: there’s large parts of 4e D&D that are absolutely terrific. I’d struggle to find fault in two out of the three Core Books; they’re right up there as among the best RPG books I’ve seen, for a long time. The other one (the PHB) is considerably poorer, both in terms of layout and content. Even so, large chunks of it are great, but not in the same league as the MM and DMG. This is book which demands a restructured revision ASAP. Taking the game as a whole, 4e is an improvement over what’s gone before, though I’ve reservations when it comes to battlemat play - that’s when the game stops feeling like a role-playing game and turns into Chess With More Rules and your character stops being “the person you’re playing in your head” and turns into “that figure there”. It’s a disjoint my group isn’t used to, though we’re willing to work at it.

Here’s a word of advice for experienced gamers if you’ve yet to read 4e: don't read the PHB first. Grab the DMG or Monster Manual and read those first. This is the first time I’ve read a Dungeon Master’s Guide straight through cover-to-cover. It’s the first time I’ve seen a DMG so well written that I kept thinking “Darn. How are all those RPG tips sites going to compete with this?”. Of course they’ll be just fine, but this really is a DMG that lives up to the name. It’s a Guide for Dungeon Masters both new and old. Brilliant stuff.

Likewise, I’d struggle to find fault with the Monster Manual. I’m happy to say that the complaints about it being just full of stats and no descriptions ain’t true. Sure, there’s less actual fluff than previous Monster Manuals, but what there is is all good. At first I missed the “Ecology” information, but then realized that I never used it anyhow. The locale for every creature is “wherever the heck the GM wants”! Snow ogres? You got ‘em! Troglodytes that live in trees? Yup! It’s a small change, but it reflects this Edition of D&D’s ethos of putting the Tools to Choose back in the hands of the GM.

Every single monster deserves it’s entry in this book. It’s like they’ve put together a “best of all the 3rd Edition MMs” and cut out the sub-par beasties which every edition picks up over time.

It might be silly, but my first impression of any Monster Manual comes from the very first critter. Sure it’s all alphabetical, but that very first Monster’s job is to set the tone for all the rest. As with the 3.5e Monster Manual, that pride of place goes to the Aboleth. Compare that to the lame-as-crap Abeil from the lame-as-crap MMII. See? First impressions count.

If I had to find fault in this Monster Manual it’s that there seems to be an awful lot of snakes (and snake-like beasties) for your money, and not a lot of low-level critters that a DM can use right at the start of the campaign. There’s only so many times Kobold and Goblin encounters are interesting, y’know In reality it’s less of an issue than first appears, as the DMG’s section on encounter building makes clear. Even so, I expect a slew of 3rd party Monster Guides with Low-level Critters Real Soon.

Highlighting just a few (of the many) good parts of the Monster Manual, I love the entries for Drakes and Humans in particular. The idea of Drakes nestling around the top of buildings and stealing shiny things is too good to pass up, and I’m going to throw a Needlefang Drake Swarm at my players the first chance I get. As with any other “monster”, Humans get an entry with several different stat-blocks. In this case, there’s stats ready for that ugly crowd of commoners (charmingly called “Human Rabble”) and their Charismatic leader, Bandits, Guards, Berserkers and a Mage. It hearkens back to Classic D&D’s treatment of Humans, and I love it. A part of the entry is up on the Wizard’s site for free download too if you want a sneak peek, though it’s just the Berserker and Mage. That’s a darned shame - if they had provided the full Human entry I’d have printed it off to keep in my PHB. Maybe I’ll do that anyhow With just the Human entry I can run a city-based adventure on the fly from start to finish without needing any other resource. Nice.

For me, other high points include the entry for Zombies and Skeletons, with Zombies in particular having much more of a schlock-horror treatment than previous D&D versions. The Zombie Weakness is pure Headshot, and will have players craving a Shotgun +1 While on the subject of crossing genres, the Kruthik entry (originally from the Miniatures Handbook) would make a passable substitute for Alien. I’d have preferred to see the Kython from the Book of Vile Darkness fill this role and merit entry in the first MM, but that’s just me. One curious omission in this Monster Manual is the total lack of Dinosaurs. I’d expect them to have pride of place in the new MMII as soon as that’s released. Fingers crossed.

Which leads us back to the Players Handbook. Let’s save that for another blogpost, eh?

RPG

Comments on NotEverythingIsBlackAndWhite

All is forgiven. Come and get me, Elven scum.

How many other bloggers do you know that are worth XP?!

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Comments on IHaveAnEntryInTheMonsterManual

One of my main impressions of 4th Edition D&D is that Wizard’s have shifted the goalposts of the starting level. 1st level characters in 4e feel and have a power level roughly equivalent to 3rd Edition’s 4th level. That makes sense as conventional wisdom is that 4th level is when 3e comes into it’s own and the game really starts to shine. The Keep on Shadowfell re-inforced this impression, playing very much like a typical 4th-level adventure from the pages of Dungeon magazine.

Whether it’s a good or bad thing depends on your style of play; if you’re the kind of gamer who favours low level, low magic adventures then you’re left out in the cold with this change. On the other hand, if you prefer your D&D with a bit more of a power crunch, then this’ll be right up your street.

To test this theory, I generated two characters - one in 3e, the other in 4e - both based around the same character concept. Let’s see how the numbers match up. Even though we’re not strictly comparing like-with-like - 3e and 4e are very different games - it should give us some idea how the power level has shifted.

Let’s meet the victim.

Rendered in Poser, just for this blogpost. Wowee!

Here’s Keira (pronounced kee-ira), female Elven Rogue. She’s no last name, having been abandoned at the doorsteps of a city Church as a babe - a very unusual act for any elf to commit. She’s tomboyish, agile with a catlike grace and was a capable burglar until the City Watch gave her a choice - join a legitimate acredited Adventuring Party, or eat prison food. She’s a likeable personality and tends to see the good in most folks, though has little concept of personal ownership. If it’s not nailed down and she wants it, she’ll take it. Blame her Church upbringing…….

Here’s Keira’s stats in Third Edition:

Keira, CG Female Elven Rogue-4

STR 12, DEX 18, CON 8, INT 13, WIS 11, CHA 14

hp 16, AC 17 (Mwk Studded Leather), Init +4

Fort +0, Ref +8, Will +1

WP: Elf’s & Rogue’s, AP: Light, Acrobatic, Weapon Finesse

Uncanny Dodge, Sneak Attack +2d6, Trap Sense +1, Trapfinding, Evasion

Immune to Sleep, Low-light Vision, +2 vs, Enchantment

Mwk Rapier +8, 1d6+1, 18-20/x2

Mwk Longbow +8, 1d8, 20/x3, 100’

Balance +6, Climb +5, Diplomacy +4, Disable Device +8, Hide +11, Jump +8

Listen +9, Move Silently +11, Open Locks +11, Search +10, Spot +7, Tumble +13

Langs: Common, Elven, Gnome

3e Keira was generated using my standard array of 10,11,12,13,14,15. Despite being a 4th level character, I gave her equipment equal to 3e 1st level to keep the playing field level, though did allow her Masterwork armour and weapons. You’ll see why later.

While she’s not optimised, 3e Keira is a pretty good all-rounder with a clear emphasis on being the skill monkey in any team. Consistent with her backstory she’s an awesome acrobatic thief with plenty of second-storey skills which will help any dungeon party get past traps, obstacles and the like. Combat-wise she’s more of a harrier-type, likely to hit regularly but for comparatively low damage. If cornered alone, she should be able to hold her own; in a team she’s more likely to hang back and use her Longbow to good effect. Add her Sneak Attack (and +11 Hide skill!) into the mix and she’s one heck of a sniper too. Nice.

Now onto her Fourth Edition incarnation.

Keira, Good Female Elven Rogue-1

STR 12, CON 10, DEX 18, INT 13, WIS 13, CHA 14

hp 22, bloodied 11, healing surges 6, Init +4

AC 16 (Leather armour),Fort 10, Ref 16, Will 12

WP: Elf’s & Rogue’s, AP: Cloth, leather

Speed 7, Low-light vision, Fey origin

Group Awareness, Wild Step

First Strike, Rogue Tactics:Artful Dodger, Rogue Weapon Talent, Sneak Attack +2d6

Light Step

Deft Strike/will, Sly Flourish/will

Elven Accuracy/encounter, Positioning Strike/enounter, Trick Strike/day

Short Sword, basic: +4, 1d6+1

Longbow, basic +6 1d10, 20/40, Load free

Acrobatics* +10, Bluff* +7, Nature +3, Perception* +8, Stealth* +10, Streetwise* +7, Thievery* +9

Langs: Common, Elven

*denotes Trained skill

(I’m intentionally not detailing the Powers. Go buy the books and look ‘em up, already!)

This version of Keira used 4e’s default array of 10,11,12,13,14,16, and were allocated to the same stats in order. Overall, her stats end up a little higher than her 3e sister’s (despite the 3e version getting a +1 to her DEX at 4th level). That’s in line with 4e’s “Penalties are Bad” ethos.

First, a few observations about the 4e Rogue.

I’m somewhat shocked that neither the Elf race nor Rogue class gets Rapier as a weapon proficiency, especially given that so many of a Rogue’s Powers are swashbuckling in style. This should be a no-brainer inclusion, but it ain’t there. It’s like we’ve gone back to the Classic D&D list of Thief’s weapons, but bolted on a Swashbuckling style. That’s what design-by-committee gets you, I guess. Still, rules are rules, and rather than burn a Feat, I’ve given this incarnation of Keira a Short Sword instead. Makes no sense with the style of her Powers, but it’s as close to that Elf-with-Rapier feel as I can get. Ah well.

Keira’s alignment is now Good rather than Chaotic Good, but it means much the same. I’m on the fence regarding the dumbed-down Alignment system. I feel it takes a little something away from the D&D flavour, but adds the intriguing Unaligned option to the mix. Personally, I’d have rather they kept the matrix and added the Unaligned option too, but it’s no great loss overall.

One thing worth noting is 4e Keira’s Sneak Attack power. It adds exactly the same amount of damage as her 3e 4th level counterpart (+2d6), right from the start. That’s quite a boost form the original +1d6 at 1st level, and adds the overally feeling that the game has shifted starting points.

When it comes to Feats, I wanted to emphasise Keira’s acrobatic cat-like nature, especially as her combat abilities were more than covered by 4e’s Powers system. If anything, the 4e Feats choices are better than 3rd Edition’s. At last, Feats have class-based prerequisites rather than being tied to some silly artificial “class-feature” restriction, and the range of Feats available in the PHB are excellent. It almost makes up for the limited, crappy and repetitive range of Powers choices. Almost Light Step is a perfect Feat choice for Keira - it gives a bonus to her Acrobatics and Stealth skills, increases the overall party movement rate and makes her harder to track too. Neat! Much as I’m not a fan of huge chunks of 4e, the new seriously Feats rock.

Skills-wise, 4e Keira is slightly lower in skill than her 3rd Edition 4th level counterpart, but not by much. Her Stealth and Acrobatics are a touch lower than the equivalent, but it’s only a couple of points. I’d say that overall, the two characters are a reasonable match, especially given 4e’s much broader skill definitions. For example, Acrobatics encompasses the old Escape Artist and Balance skills, and Thievery covers Disabling Traps, Opening Lock and general Sleight of Hand.

I gave 4e basic (rather than Masterwork) weapons and armour because she gets a bonus due to proficiency anyhow; add in the Powers and this puts her at a comparable level to her 3rd Edition 4th level counterpart, especially with her Short Sword. Add in the Elven Accuracy and her Longbow is more than a match for her 3rd Edition counterpart.

For example, with her Deft Strike, Keira is at +6 to hit with her Short Sword for 1dd+4 damage, and move up to 2 square to do it, in addition to her regular Move. That take 3e Keira’s Rapier +8 for 1d6+1 damage, spits on it and tramples it right into the ground!

In short, I reckon my feelings were right. 4th level is the new 1st level. If you want to play 4th Edition, only without the additional expense, generate 4th level 3e characters, but with 1st level equipment

This is the third character I’ve generated for 4th Edition, and I’ll admit it’s the first time I’ve enjoyed the experience. Maybe it’s because I’m getting used to the (very poorly laid out) PHB, or it’s the first time I’ve given the Skills and Feats system a closer look. Either way, it’s growing on me. I just wish there weren’t so few Powers, so much emphasis on Battlemat combat and so many other problems with the system. But that, as they say, is a whole other blogpost.

Later!

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Ah, balance. The Holy Grail of D&D Games Designers everywhere. It’s become something of an obsession in the RPG industry, to the point where it seems balance is more important than fun. Which is crazy.

The thing is that, if anything, it’s imbalance which drives a good Fantasy story, and that’s something completely ignored by all but four RPGs. I’ll come back to those later.

A typical adventuring party in a fantasy novel is a very imbalanced thing; just take a look at the Fellowship from Lord of the Rings for proof. You’ve the hobbits hovering around 1st or 2nd level (Merry and Pippin arguably being 2nd level Rogues), Boromir, Legolas and Gimli about 6th, Aragorn around 10th level and Gandalf….. start at 20th level, and keep lookin’ up.

The numbers might differ depending on your perception of the characters, but there’s no doubting there’s a huge spread of levels through the party.

Want more proof? Pick any generic fantasy novel and you’ll find a story about a young nobody who joins a party of experienced heroes to fullfil a prophecy and become some kind of demigod. This is a trope (hi, ChattyDM!) right in the heart of fantasy novels from the Belgariad to Magician and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Replace the words “young nobody” with “bitter leprous old hack” and you get Thomas Covenant. Turn the trope on it’s head (experienced hero/demigod teams up with a load of nobodies and becomes human again) and you’ve got anything by David Gemmell.

While it’s common in the fantasy genre, it’s less common in role-playing. Back to those four RPGs that break that mould (I’m sure there’s more); I’m thinking FASA’s Star Trek, Ars Magica, the Doctor Who role-playing game and the venerable and much-loved Tunnels & Trolls. Each system in their own way not only accepted imbalance between characters, but positively revelled in it in their own sweet ways. In Star Trek, the players could take it in turns to play the ill-fated redshirts as well as their own characters. If an away team was called for, one or two of the players would run their own Officer-class characters while the rest of the team would grab a redshirt - in 4th Edition D&D parlance, the rough equivalent to Minions. A large part of the fun was finding out if you were going to be the unlucky one, and which gruesome death would befall your redshirt. If a redshirt was lucky enough to survive a few away missions (yeh, right), they had a chance at promotion and a serious improvement in their survival prospects. I know long-term Star Trek gamers who grew more fond of their redshirts than they did their main characters.

In a similar vein, in Ars Magica the players ran a number of low-level grogs - servants and fighter/bodyguards - alongside their powerful Mage. While the grogs were more capable than Star Trek’s redshirts, they were still seriously out-classed by the Mages. D&D would put them around 1st level, compared to the Mage’s 8th-12th level power. That’s an unthinkable imbalance of power that would have D&D game designers sent straight to ER, but it worked, brilliantly, and helped ground an otherwise powerful game in the realities of a mythic Europe seen through the eyes of the grogs.

Then there’s Doctor Who. What more needs be said about a game where one lucky character is a Time Lord and the rest are lowly companions who’s main role is to run, scream and occasionally land a lucky punch on alien critters? But heck, playing a companion was fun!

In Tunnels & Trolls, the character generation system is inherently geared toward funky-ass adventuring parties. This is a game which positively encourages Balrogs and Pixies teaming up with who-knows what in a quest for treasure. Balance just isn’t in T&T’s vocabulary, and it’s a far, far better game for it.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that D&D adventuring parties start out with a huge disparity in class levels between the characters, but it does mean that there should be more emphasis on cohesive teamwork and what makes a darned good story over and above making sure that all those +2 bonuses balance between the players. In the best spirit of team-ups from the Fellowship to the Fantastic Four, a decent adventuring party should be stronger than it’s component parts. It shouldn’t matter one jot that the Rogue isn’t as good in combat as the Fighter - he shoudn't be! (I’m looking at you, 4th Edition. Oh yes I am). Each character class should bring something different to the team, not just add yet more explosive and increasingly unrealistic combat abilities.

Role-playing should be about role-playing, and therein lies the balance. Any game where an “adventure” consists of 95% combat encounters and 5% where the GM reads a block of text and sets up the battlemats for the next encounter isn’t a role-playing game. It’s Talisman, or the D&D Board Game, or World of Fucktards or whatever. When combat is central to the whole thing and everyone becomes a combatant, the differences between the classes suffers.

But anyhow. Back to balance.

The point is that Fighter-types should be good at combat. It’s their thing. Rogues should be good at the sneaky investigative stuff, and Wizards at the mystical arcane jickery-pokery. Each character should be given a chance to shine by doing their thing, and that’s not necessarily kicking the crap of the nearest green scaly beastie. That's the only balancing factor you need. I’ve run D&D games where not a single combat encounter occurs for several sessions, just pure role-playing interaction. This is the first time I can honestly say I’d struggle to do that in an Edition of D&D. The game just doesn’t support that style of play any more.

By making combat the central (indeed, near-as-dammit, only) measure of the game, 4th Edition D&D has ramped up the combat prowess of all the classes to “balance” them with each other. That’s Bad Game Design, and combined with all of the other Bad Game Design elements of 4th Edition (teleport at first level, illogical Powers and the loss of alignment matrix to name just a few) it turns D&D into…. well, a bit of a joke, frankly.

Shame I’m not laughing.

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The next three pages to Sin20: The Life and Death of Callen Oncedark are online right now, and features Snakes. On a roof.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get clickin’!

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This is the first page of Sin20: The Life And Death Of Callen Oncedark, my new Sin City-inspired D&D Fantasy comic. If you want to see more, or like your fantasy starkly black-and-white (with possibly a tiny splash of colour), click on the image to hop over to the Microlite20 forums where I’ve posted the first five pages with more to come!

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Following the maxim of “if you’ve got nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all”, I’m going to focus on what I do like about 4th Edition. I’m most of the way through the Players’ Handbook, and sorry to say it’s quite a small list. The good news though is that a lot of the good stuff can easily be ‘ported back into 3rd Edition, making that a much better game instead.

Chapter One

The first, introductory chapter of the PHB is right on the nail. It speaks about the heritage of the game, what role-playing is about and managed to get me really fired up for this new Edition of the game. I’d rate it as one of the best “intro to role-playing” chapters I’ve read in a long, long time. Simple, clear and perfect fodder for new and old gamers alike.

Small, simplified

This is how to make Small characters! Unlike 3.5e’s travesty of “different weapon sizes”, 4th Edition just says that Halflings and the like can’t use big, hefty two-handed weapons and have to use some regular-sized weapons (longswords, mainly) two-handed. That keeps the equipments lists simple, solves the problem of having to provide “correctly sized” magical weapons and does it all with the bare minimum of rules of fuss. It also happens to be how I ran 3rd Edition anyhow, which is an added bonus

Minions

I’m familiar with Minions and Mooks from Mutants & Masterminds, but rather stupidly never thought of putting them into D&D. These are simple-to-handle critters who go down with a single hit from the Heroes, and do much to emphasise the characters as the centre of the action. I’ve used concepts such as Hit Point Pools (where I give treat a horde of monsters like a Swarm), but never really considered making the monsters 1hp critters. This one rule goes a loooooong way toward solving two problems with 3.5 Edition; not being able to run combats involving tonnes of critters, and emphasizing the Heroes’ central role in the story. Now you can toss the Adventurers into a room with 15 Orc Minions and a couple of Big Bads and let them chew it up, just like we used to in Classic D&D. Brilliant!

Races (mostly)

With a few reservations, I like how the Races are presented in 4th Edition. Each race has particular strengths and no weaknesses. This is better than 3.5e’s idea that every damned thing should be internally balanced, so for every +2 there has to be a -2 somewhere too. Balance shouldn’t be an obsession, and it certainly shouldn’t be a guiding factor of the game - but that’s another blogpost for another time. I’m no fan of the Dragonborn race as they smack far too much of being a marketing-inspired WoW knockoff for my liking, and I’ve serious concerns about the Eldarin’s teleport ability. That’s just far too open to abuse both in and out of encounters; I expect it to get seriously nerfed in the errata somewhere along the line. On the plus side though, I do like the new Half-Elves and Humans. Shame about the lack of Half-Orcs and Gnomes, but I guess we can’t have everything, eh? I’m seriously disappointed half-orcs don’t even make the Monster Manual too. Ah well.

Choices, choices

One of the guiding principles of this Edition of D&D was choices. The designers clearly wanted the players to be able to customize the characters so that, for example, every Elven Ranger was different. That’s an excellent goal, and I’m sure that with a few more PHBs and supplements under their belts, it’ll be truly achievable. The problem is that right now we’ve got the goal, but not really the means to reach it. The PHB has far too few Powers for each class, and too many of those are duplicates, near-duplicates or just follow a simple combat-centred bonus to hit/bonus damage mechanic. In short, I love the goal, but they’ve fallen far short of turning it into reality. I’d much rather there were fewer huge double page spread art pages, and more damned content. They could have pulled the Powers out of the class section, consolidated the duplicates, removed the spurious-padding artwork and given us double the number of Powers in an alphabeticised chapter at the back - kinda like the 3e Spell List section, but for all classes. That would be easier to lookup during play, simple to use at character generation and maybe they’d even think to include powers that weren’t so bloody focused on big flashy WoW-style combat. Like that's going to happen.

Damn. I wasn’t going to criticize. But hey, at least I found some good in there too. It’s not all bad.

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