Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition | Wizards RPG Team

Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition | Wizards RPG Team | Great!!

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Dungeons and Drago...

	Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition Wizards RPG Team Wizards of the Coast, 2008 - 832 pages average customer review:based on 171 reviews view larger image
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The best RPG on the market today

4th edition is a massive improvement on 3rd edition. While a radical change from 3rd edition, perhaps even more so than 3rd edition was from 2nd edition, it still is Dungeons & Dragons, but it is a much better version of it, delivering what you enjoyed in the past but much more efficiently.

All classes are fun to play now and always have multiple interesting options. The reason for this is the new powers system; now all characters have abilities they can use whenever they want (at-will), once per encounter (encounter abilities, which tend to be more powerful or do things which are more combat-shaping), or once per day (daily abilities, very powerful abilities which significantly change the course of combat). Unlike in previous editions, ALL characters have powers of all three types, and in equal amounts; a fighter might have an at-will attack which allows him to deal damage even if he misses with the attack, an encounter power which allows him to whirl around and attack all nearby foes, and a daily power which cracks the foe's skull, dealing ongoing damage and giving them a penalty to their AC. You always have multiple options in combat; even if you've used up all of your encounter and daily powers, all characters have a minimum of two distinctive at-will attacks.

This change to the combat system fixes many of the issues of previous editions, ranging from wizards being useless at low levels after they've cast a couple spells to fighters being useless at high levels when the wizard never runs out of their overpowered spells. Additionally, characters are less likely to miss only on a 1 or hit only on a 20 - the combat system is more balanced towards more reasonable values, and characters within a given party are unlikely to vary so much that what is a trivial roll for one character is completely impossible for another.

Outside of combat, the skills system has been revised and greatly improved with an eye towards keeping values more reasonable, and better guidelines are laid out for the Dungeon Master for use of skill checks. Many related skills have been rolled into a single skill, and all of the skills now in the game are more useful and broader than they were in the past; where in 3rd edition, you might have a skill you use only once or twice in a campaign, you're expected to use most skills every adventure in 4th edition. Skill challenges are a new type of non-combat encounter; these are events such as negotiating with a duke or traversing the wilderness. Everyone in the party makes skill checks in turn, trying to use some skill which will aid them through the situation; perhaps the wizard uses his knowledge of history to tie in their plight to the duke's, while the cleric shames him into helping him with his knowledge of religion and the smooth rogue uses diplomacy to get his way. It takes multiple successes to succeed, but also multiple failures to fail, leading to an interesting non-combat analog of combat which is a great deal of fun, both for the players and for the DM. It also encourages creativity, which is always wonderful for a non-combat mechanic, and is highly flexible.

Traps have been completely redone as well; rather than the boring "search for traps in every hallway" routine the rogue has done historically, now traps are intended to be used in combats or even be encounters unto themselves which require thought, skill challenges, or combat to overcome. Kobolds may scamper across the trigger tiles for a spear trap, but when someone as heavy as a human steps on them, they get speared. Traps aren't simple Disable Device (now Thievery) checks anymore, but rather skill challenges to disable, though you could potentially destroy the spear mechanism with attacks or jump over the trapped squares - there are many ways of dealing with traps now, and traps are themselves more interactive, ranging from the standard spear trap to complex blade pendulum traps. All of this makes traps FUN, rather than just a boring hp penalty when the rogue rolls low on a Search check.

Monsters and NPCs are much easier to build now, and adventures in general are much more fun for the DM to design; they take a lot less busywork and allow you to spend your time focusing on the story, rather than trying to make an NPC actually a worthwhile foe for the two rounds he shows up. It is simple to adjust monsters to meet your needs and to generate new NPCs from scratch. It is much easier to run a game now and to prepare your own adventures, which will hopefully bring a new generation into DMing.

The overall formatting and layout of the books is massively superior to that of previous editions, or indeed of any other RPG. It is easy to read the rules and easy to reference what you need to look up; things are logically organized and very easy to get to when you need them. The rules are streamlined and they did away with many unnecessary subsystems, making combat work coherently and making it so that fighters and wizards don't have to use different rules in order to operate in combat. Wizards now roll to hit, rather than force foes to make "saving throws", meaning that everyone gets to roll dice every round and letting the wizard have some idea of how tough it is to affect his foes, much the same as a fighter.

The only real bad thing about the books are the poor indexes; they are only a page long and are missing a lot of entries you'd want to look up. However, this is not a crippling issue.

Overall, I give it a 5 out of 5; 4th edition is more fun than 3rd edition, and if you enjoyed previous editions of D&D you'll enjoy 4th edition. I heartily recommend it.

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Great!!

This is a great product for anyone who is going to be DMing. While everything you really need to play as a player is in the PHB, the Monster Manual and the DMG will be indispensable to any DM. The slipcase is made of a great cardboard that is about as thick as the covers of the books. I actually dropped mine when I got it and the case took all the shock and kept the books in perfect condition. I highly recommend this product for its price, looks, and quality.

Awesome...Awesome...Awesome...and Awesome

It came quicker than I expected, it was half the price as at a real world retail spot. It arrived in great condition. I am getting familiar with the 4th Edition rules now.

Awesome!

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