In D&Defense of 4th Edition

For those about to dice, we salute you. 

Among the things I do is play Dungeons & Dragons. Telling stories is a thing I enjoy, and collaborative storytelling with good friends and snacks is a win-win. I play 4th Edition rules in one game as a player and another as the dungeon master.  D&D was instrumental in me wanting to be a writer. Not because it was a well thought out and polished game, but because getting together with my friends and fantasizing about dragons and undead was escapist fun. It's a system that has evolved and changed over time, through forty years of play testing and adjustment.

I grew up on AD&D and remember not liking 2nd Edition, though I don't think I could remember why. I missed 3rd and 3.5 entirely, having tried the latter once. It took me hours to make a character and was bored before we ever started to adventure. A friend and game designer fell in love with a new 4th Edition system. After a 15-year hiatus, I picked my dice again and rolled for initiative when the lizard men attacked. And it was awesome. It combined the group story I loved with a fun combat board game. I was hooked. Again.

Since, I have come to learn that 4th Edition was very divisive. Much of the following came from conversations last summer at ComicCon, while Wizards of the Coast rolled out the new edition with play tests from their newly released Starter Kit. Having bought the Starter Kit and read the rules, I was dubious. With play tests happening at Nerd Prom, I was looking forward to see the new ruleset in action. I was, in the end, not compelled to purchase the new system.

Balance of the Forth

Some of the arguments against 4th Edition, I understand. Like, combat can be slow. Okay, fair enough. 4E does have a learning curve for new players and the combat can run long, especially the first few encounters as you learn the system, and get to understand your character's powers. But it's a fantastic tactical tabletop game. It forces the players to work together against the creatures on the board. But the speed of combat is a solvable issue with a few house rules.*

Another argument I understand is the rules for combat require miniatures, and therefore more money shilled out to the publishers. Again, fair point. It's Wizards forcing us to buy supplements to play their game. Welcome to the 21st century. However, having never used miniatures as a kid, I actually found it helped with visualizing combat, and made it more visceral. Thought it's considerably less fun, a fellow gamer pointed that the game still be played using coins or dice in lieu of miniatures if you don't want to spend money.

Other arguments, I just have to scratch my head at. Like, it's too much like an MMO, and catering too much to the World of Warcraft crowd. To which, I say, so? See the aforementioned fantastic-tactical-tabletop-game comment. And it's not like assigning rogues as dps, clerics as heals, and fighters as tanks isn't an intuitive leap for players.

The balanced classes make it too much of a level playing field and it doesn't matter what class you choose. To which I say, what? Seriously, what? An addendum to that complaint, the mechanics get in the way of the role-playing. I wholly disagree. A level playing field keeps you from wondering if one race or class is so much better than the other and lets you play the type of character you want instead of second guessing your choices. In the old game, wizards were useless-to-terrible at lower levels, and all other classes were the opposite.

The rules for 4E were presented very mechanics heavy, assuming that players wouldn't need a lot of handholding to know how to role play. The new edition does the opposite. It gives the players tools to develop flavor text, and hides the more complicated mechanics of the game in semantics (more on that below).

In the three core rulebooks for 4E, the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual, there were a number of complaints that revolved around changes and omissions. Gnomes and Half-Orcs weren't listed as playable races in the initial edition of the Player's Handbook. Instead they got Dragonborn and Tieflings. Outrage! But in the appendix of the Monster Manual, there were stats for making the Gnomes, Half-Orcs and a number of other humanoid monsters into playable characters.

Seriously, though. Dragonborn are dumb. 

Druids, Monks and Bards weren't playable classes. Instead they got Warlords, a new class who directs others on the battlefield. Again, outrage! But it was only a matter of time before those classic classes were introduced in later editions. To include everything in the first edition of the Players Handbook would have been overwhelming to new players, and, as a player of old, I appreciated the inclusion of new races and classes.

In the end, 4th Edition's biggest crime was being different. Too different from previous editions for existing players. The mythology, of a world emerging from a dark age after the empires of the Dragonborn and the Tieflings fell, was not well received. Probably because they were in the Player's Handbook and Gnomes were not. As DMs can create whatever world they want, I find this a hollow complaint. Breaking attacks into classes of at-wills, encounter powers, and daily powers (small, medium, and large) was too far removed from editions past.

Revenge of the Fifth

5th Edition was the system that was to 'fix' all that. And according to their marketing, the designers looked at all of the editions of D&D and chose the 'best' of each edition. Wizard spell books are unnecessarily complicated, just the way they used to be. Fighters have nothing to do in a fight other than swinging their sword, just the way it used to be. Rogues are slightly better balanced, being able to do more damage. But it looks like as the game progresses, Wizards are still ridiculously overpowered just the way it used to be. The combat in the play test at ComicCon was both horribly unbalanced and, worst of all, boring. All the while the DM was spitting vitriol about 4E and how this was 'much better.'

However, the new edition also does an excellent job of hiding some of the more complicated concepts with simple semantics. Minor actions in 4E become bonus actions for classes that need them. The four types of defenses in 4E (Armor Class, Reflex, Fortitude, and Will) is streamlined to one. Kind of. Defenses Fortitude and Will are hidden as saving throws for various creature attacks and spells. Reflex are is rolled into Armor Class, just the way it used to be. Not eliminated, hidden in semantics.

And the rules are presented so that miniatures are optional as a grand return to the Theater of the Mind. But the play test at ComicCon used maps and miniatures to help provide some context to the combat. So, improvement? Or more semantic shenanigans?

There are some nice things about the new edition. The concept of Inspiration is straight up stealing the Benny system from Savage Worlds, which is a system I like a lot. So that I approve of. I've tinkered with it as a reward and it works well for players.

The character background elements are interesting, too. And to their credit, the structure of ideals, bonds, and flaws is nice. However, at the end of the day, it's just a framework for flavor text. Both of those elements I may incorporate in future games, but that doesn't mean I need to buy any of their new product to use them.

As a kid I gravitated to the storytelling aspects of the game, in hindsight, possibly because the combat aspects of the game were so broken and boring. The new system attempts to be like D&D of old, and, for good or ill, it is.

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*Now, for those looking for a faster 4th Edition game here are a few quick suggestions. Pick the person with the highest initiative and then go clockwise in order, so they know who's next. Group like monsters by initiative and rolling all their attacks and damage at once Give players a +1 bonus if they're ready on their turn. Instigate a 'shot clock' and if they fail, they can only use at-wills.