Thread: 4th Ed. Yea or Nay?

First off... I paid 102 dollars for the 3 book set.

Second off... you are paying too much at 75.

http://www.buy.com/prod/4th-edition-...206857693.html

Buy.com has them for 51.95 with FREE shipping.

I got them from a local shop with 10% off cover price and did it only to help support the store. But I wouldn't recommend that to everyone.

And yes. They are well worth it. They've made a LOT of very significant changes and I think I like the rules quite a bit. And I've had every version of D&D since the 1st edition AD&D, along with the basic, and expert sets (and there was a third if I remember right). I like 3rd Edition a lot, but there are a LOT of serious flaws with the old rules that they seem to have addressed with the new ones.

For instance; resurrection is one of my serious pet peeves. Especially with high level characters. I just finished a campaign I was running with epic level characters and frankly... it was horrible. For me that is. Try instilling fear and terror into a party of adventurers that can fight toe to toe with a tarrasque (even if they can't outright kill it) or a dracolich. Try instilling fear into a party that has a cleric that can perform true resurrection... A character that can't permanently die cannot be unnerved... And even lower level characters can often get a resurrection even if it takes most of their bankroll to do it.

With the new rules they've a) made it harder to die, allowing nearly everyone to heal in some aspects. and b) made it MUCH more painful to get a resurrection, having penalties that follow the character for a while, and costing a kings ransom.

And that's just one aspect of the new rules. They've reworked a LOT of stuff. In some ways it almost feels kind of "dumbed down" or more like an MMORPG in nature now. But for pure gameplay I think it's a step in the right direction.

It's well worth the 52 dollars you'll spend on it at the link above. I'm currently writing a character generator for my site (still heavily under development) at www.favoredenemy.com and I'm hoping to have it ready to go online within the next few weeks (probably long before WOTC has their D&D Insider character generator ready.

don't care much for 4th ed. my biggest beef is that in addition to the regularly priced books you have to pay a subscription fee as well to get all the content.

not doing that....my group just went back to 2nd ed. to date still the best edition in the D&D series by far.

You don't HAVE to get D&D Insider subscriptions... Frankly there's nothing on that site right now that I care to pay for anyway. All the rules you need are still in the books like previous versions.

in order to get ALL the content you do.

and they still charge the same price or more as they did for previous edition books...fucking rape if you ask me.

2nd Ed 4evah bitches!

They just keep dumbing it down....
If you need me, I will be behind the DM screen rolling a saving throw for the best edition to date: 2nd edition.

Bunnies and Borroughs! WooT... blast from the past. Right up there with the Watership Down Boxed Edition, Chill by Pacesetter, Doctor Who Boxed edition... lots of good one shot games or limited release to look for an off night from Advanced D&D...

2nd Edition sucked by the way. I call it Dave Arneson's revenge.

4th Edition. Save your money...

I recommend that If you want to get into the best support for D&D 3.5, go to www.paizo.com

Paizo is the folks who had Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine for the past few years. With the demise of those publications, Paizo took the development and editorial staff and started using them to work on world building and content support for 3.5 Their plan is for at least the next 5 years to support 3.5 through their Gamemastery and Pathfinder lines. For my mere $40 a month, I get two modules, a Pathfinder Campaign sourcebook, Gazateer sourcebook and new 3.5 content. Each Month.

Anyway, back to 4th Edition... the problem is that with 4th edition, there is no longer any distinction or uniqueness to the classes. 4th Edition has finished WoTC's migration to their version of GURPS. Generic vanilla character creation where you simply plug whatever you want (which is fine but its not D&D). Gone are the days when you needed a party of Fighter, Mage, Healer, Thief to get the job done. Now you have Hybrid 1, Hybrid 2, Hybrid 3, Hybrid 4. It was already irritating enough to have rogues become 2nd Class citizens by allowing EVERYONE to search for traps etc. With 3rd Edition it can sometimes be a joke watching the thief try to find a trapped door.
thief: Ok, I check the door for traps.
DM: you find none but the door seems suspicious.
fighter: Yeah, I check for traps too...
healer: Me too...
DM: get in line folks, no shoving, ok make your rolls... Ok, you don't find traps but as before the door is suspicious.
torchbearer: Yeah um... I search for traps too.
DM: ok, you find a needle trap.
fighter: I beat the crap out of it until it no longer functions...