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

Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition | Wizards RPG Team | Vet Likes 4th Edition: Made for the WoW Gen

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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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A good improvement over 3E

Dungeon and Draongs 4th Edition is a big improvement over 3E. The biggest improvements comes in streamlining the game, and not making the classes so front loaded. This means, that players will be able to better plan for the long running campaign. I also enjoy the paired down skill system, but I am a little unhappy that skills no longer get points but auto level when a character does.

The books are well made, feature fantastic art and binding. The editing has been pretty good and the books are well made. Since it is D&D, the support should be there and I'm glad they reset the line and set it up for the next decade.

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Vet Likes 4th Edition: Made for the WoW Gen

I've been playing D&D since 2nd edition. I played my first game in 1994, and DM'd my first game in 1995. While I was a major Skills & Powers fan, I really was glad 3rd Edition came along, and made a massive upgrade of the rules, fixing inconsistencies. By then, however, I had moved on to college, then a rad career, so had little time to really leverage 3.x.

Over 11 years later, I tried to get a group together consisting of younger Y-Gen's; 26 and younger. A lot of this generation grew up playing MMO's, like World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Counterstrike type games. The thought of paging through a book to look up rules, or to identify "what they could do" was looked down upon, and seen as a hassle. The rules were definitely thorough, but there was no motivation to learn the majority of them when you're used to a series of GUI panels that show your statistics, abilities, and what your magical inventory positively does to your character.

Thus, the "WoW" generation was really hard to market to, and play with. Delegating game running is challenging for the short attention span.

4th Edition is a nice reprieve, and definitely targeted at this market. The rules, although similiar to 3rd Edition for combat, are much simpler. Additionally, character abilities are a streamlined so that each character has a set of powers to choose from. Most importantly, this includes 1st level; now it's no longer miserable playing a Wizard from 1st level till 3rd. The character classes are meant to work together; the rules make each have an important role in battle.

The Players Handbook & Dungeon Master's Guide are both much more approachable. Bigger headings, brighter colors, and most importantly: smaller in thickness.

There are some things that are weird; healing surges I don't really get, but understand this allows an easy, global healing mechinism and mimic's digital MMO's that allow you to "sit, eat, and gain all your health back after a minute". Rituals (the new spells) are confusing as well; defining where a Power ends and a Ritual begins is challenging. Also, not all classes and races are available yet (at the time of this writing); this makes using existing characters from other campaigns challenging even with the conversion guide they have. Finally, in true D&D fashion, backward compatibility is an afterthought, if that. Converting 2nd & 3rd edition content is hard.

Overall, though, I like it a lot. This version of D&D is easier to learn, more clear to Player Characters on what they can & should do, and clearer to new DM's on how to run a game.

...the only reason I didn't give this rating a 5 is because the digital components that go along with 4th Edition, the dndinsider.com tools, are not ready. I write software for a living so totally respect & understand software not being done on time. Regardless, this target market clearly wants it now to enhance their games.

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