New Info on 4e

Hey Ho everyone.

After a bit of research due to an uncontrolable curiosity I had to find out what was coming down the pike (since 4e is released this month).

So here is what I have found for your 4e pleasures.

Here are some scans of character sheets and other relevant data:

Additionally, here are the release dates for 4e material... they pushed back some of the books so June looks like the start of the whole trend.


And, although a lengthy read... a very good insite into 4e from a man who has been playtesting since October 2007... take the stage Massawyrm:

Hola all. Massawyrm here.

I’ve waited a long time to write this review. And let it be known now that what you’re about to read isn’t from someone who has gotten a hold of a bootleg playtest copy and gave it a quick once over. No. This is a long time coming. I’ve been playtesting 4th edition since late October. Long under an NDA, my excitement for this new edition has been bubbling over into something of a churning froth for the better part of four months now. Every Saturday of those four months (holidays be damned) our group (comprised of three married couples and a single friend) has gotten together to nosh some potato chips, guzzle some coffee and roll some god damned dice. One of our members, a freelancer for WotC, needed to learn the rules for an upcoming 4E book he got hired to work on. But as he apparently learns the rules better playing than he does running, he turned to me over a cup of coffee, narrowed his eyes and told me point blank that I was about to jump in head first. That’s right. Dungeon Massawyrm. There. Now the joke is out of everyone’s system.

Let me just say this upfront. I. Love. 4E. And I didn’t want to. Much like many of you out there, the 3.5 partial reboot just five years ago pissed me off. But we’ve spent 8 years now with the better part of this system. And hell, even 5 years is a long time. But Massawyrm, you’re thinking you don’t know how much I’ve spent on 3.5. No? Here at the Casa de la Wyrm we don’t have a D&D bookshelf. We have a D&D closet. It’s where I keep my boxes of Dwarven Forge Master Maze, my big plastic bins of D&D Minis, and two long shelves of over $1000 in 3.5 books. But just 2 weeks into playing 4E, I boxed up every non-fluff heavy book I owned, drove down to Half Price Books and sold them for as much cash as I could get. I knew I would never, ever, touch them again. Yes. 4E really is that good. It is the XBOX 360 to your XBOX. And it is time to upgrade my friends.

One other thing to note is that the playtest DID NOT INCLUDE the use of the DI (Digital Initiative.) There have been a lot of rumors that you need this new online service to play. These rumors are horseshit. We have played for four months with only a Players Handbook, a Dungeon Masters Guide and a Monster Manual. And Nothing else. 4E does not require a computer. Although if everything I hear about it is true, I just might want to keep my laptop with me once it is up and running.

What’s about to follow is a three part story. But it’s not about the details. What they changed here or what isn’t there. After this weekend every gaming forum out there will be flooded with details. This is going to be about the experience. What it is like playing Dungeons & Dragons 4E. This isn’t an article meant just for you junkies who, like myself, can quote the 3.5 rules - chapter and verse. It’s also for those of you who haven’t played in 15 years and secretly, though you might never admit it, wish you could go back and play it again. Or for those out there who haven’t played, but always wanted to. This June, 4th Edition will be unleashed upon the world and it is the perfect time to pick up the hobby or give it a second shot.

Every decade or so Dungeons & Dragons gets a make over. Not just a facelift, but a complete rebooting of the system. What I’ve always loved about these reboots is that each time the designers make sure to integrate, rather than move away from, the innovations of the previous decade. When 2E came out in ’89, it took all of the math, the charts and the diversity that had emerged in gaming throughout the 80’s and created one of the most complicated systems to date. When 3E hit the shelves in 2000, it took the revolution of the Vampire White Wolf Storyteller system - the notion of complete character individuality and modular options – and gave it a strong, but much more complicated system to work with. Now, with the revolutions in online gaming, Dungeons & Dragons once again finds itself evolving. From Everquest to the World of Warcraft (and the many other imitators in between and after) comes the notion of perfect balance – the idea that every class, every character, every role in the party, has something to do and never, ever, has to sit on the sidelines.

That is the single most important change to this system. I don’t care what you’re playing, whether the party’s wizard, its cleric, the fighter or its rogue, you will always have the option of doing something useful. You will never be forced (as long as you’re conscious) to simply sit and watch everyone else play because you’ve run out of spells or don’t have a high enough Spell Penetration or lack a weapon property to get through DR. Those days are done. Clerics don’t just hide behind the fighter waiting to stand them up any more. And you can actually successfully run a party without one now. Oh, and the retarded notion of having to rest for the day because the wizard blew through his spells too quickly (even when the rest of the party is full up)? Over and done with. In redesigning the way the character classes work, they’ve managed to eradicate most of the stupid tropes that we ’ve all just kind of sighed at and tried to ignore in the context of role playing.

Now, there’s a notion floating around out there that since the goal of 4E was to make the rules simple it means that they’re making them stupid – as to be easier for younger or dumber players to understand. The problem with that, aside from the fact that its probably one of the more arrogant stances out there, is that it belies a complete misunderstand of what 4E is all about. Is it simpler thatn 3.x? Oh hell yes. But it is elegantly simple. Intuitive. It’s like complaining that switching from DOS to Windows was stupid because now anyone could use a computer. When really all it meant was that now you didn’t have to type all that code. Your computer wasn’t dumbed down any. Neither is D&D. It still has all the complication that was in 3.5 – lots of character options, a focus on role playing and tactical combats that are even far more elaborate than before (more on that later.) But all the rules work just like every other rule does. They all make sense.

You pretty much know how a rule works before you look it up because it works just like the rule for this other situation.

The problem with Dungeons & Dragons has always been that everything is a special case. Every spell interacts with the universe differently and has to encounter a thousand different monsters. The soul of 4E is that now all those rules spin in the same direction (if you will) rather than flying off in a hundred different ones. At first glance there are a couple rule changes that will seem silly. The one that crawled up my craw the first session was the fact that diagonal movement counts as just one square. The idea that you could move faster diagonally than you could straight or side to side is retarded. But by the second session I didn’t care. Why? No one EVER had to recount a movement. You could eyeball distances without surprises popping up because you forgot to double count the second diagonal.

Everyone moves and counts and there’s never a hint of second guessing. And when it came down to it, any optimization a player could get out of it was balanced by the monsters having the same thing. Life is just easier this way.

EVERY RULE CHANGE IS LIKE THIS. It all just works. Fluid, intuitive and fun.

And man is it fun. The new tactics are incredible. Anyone who thinks simple rules mean simple combats is in for a shock. Every class has a slate of weird abilities and powers that set them apart from every other class – and when a party learns each other’s tactics and begins to work in concert, watch the fuck out. Because things get crazy. Tomorrow’s piece will be about what it’s like to exist as a DM in this new tactical environment, because a DM really has to be on his toes. Simple minded DMs are going to get walked all over by a competent group of players.

The new combat system is glorious. There are so many options, so many opportunities to do really fun and incredible things, that the game becomes more about what you want to do in the moment rather than just sitting around waiting for your turn to come up. Combats still take about as long as they did before, you just get to do more during them. While iterative attacks are gone, it never feels like they’re missing. The Fighter is still a sword whirling death machine that gets a lot of chances to drop beasts. Rather than hour and a half 3 round combats, you end up with 10-20 round epic combats that allow everyone to do a variety of things. It no longer seems like a waste of a turn to move, it’ll get back to you momentarily. Sometimes moving two or three rounds in a row really pays off. You no longer have to worry about missing out on any action just because you want to get into position. Which leads to crazier maneuvers and more fun at the table.

And the rule simplicity allows players to really attempt craziness without fear of bizarre rules. My wife, who has played 3.5 with us for years, never felt comfortable with it. She was always concerned that she didn’t know the rules as well as everyone else. While she enjoyed the game (and having friends over to play once a week) she isn’t the type to sit down with the rulebooks and memorize them. She’s geeky enough to live with and love me, but she draws the line in the dirt there. 4E on the other hand has made her a different woman. She’s confident. She loves her character and the rules and tries out all sorts of strange things. She no longer looks at me and asks “Is this right?” Instead, she plows forward, kicking ass and suggesting tactics to the more senior members of the party (like the game designer.) And she asks me repeatedly about whether or not I’ve planned next weeks game. She looks forward to it.

And amid the rule changes comes the racial and class changes. While there’s been much ado about these concepts, the new focus of the game places a lot on the role playing and direct play aspect of race and class. There is a difference between a 6th level Eladrin ranger and an Elf ranger. One gets to reroll one attack every combat and ignore difficult terrain while shifting (making a 5 foot adjust) and the other can teleport 5 squares once a combat.

Let me tell you, there’s a big difference. Dwarves are more than just short guys with low Move rates and a +2 to CON. They make great fighters for a reason, not just because the fluff says so. But at the same time there aren’

t any disadvantages to playing against type. No one will roll their eyes at a Dwarf Rogue or (once they’re out) Half Orc Sorcerers. There are benefits to playing WITH type, but never penalties for against. And that makes a WORLD of difference. Race in 3.X was all about what it did for you at 1st level and what it did to your stats. After that, it rarely mattered. Now it’s also about what it does for you at 6th or 17th or whatever.

As has been written about, there are three stages of play now. Heroic (lvls 1-10), Paragon (lvls 11-20) and Epic (21-30.) Each stage really is its own beast. Heroic is just that. It’s what most would think of as lvls 1-6 in 3.x. Flight doesn’t exist for the players yet and neither do prestige classes (now called Paragon Paths.) You’re tough but not ungodly so. Paragon really is the middle range where you get to do all sorts of crazy stuff without ever getting too silly. It’s also where you really get to step away from your class and become something new and different. And Epic is just plain silly. I honestly see a lot of folks stopping at paragon – but for those that want to get into truly EPIC level, mythologically powerful gaming, epic will do the trick. With class abilities that begin with phrases like Once per day, when you die… it allows for a whole, bizarre new type of play that actually manages to maintain its consistency. But more about all this in later.

Is there anything I don’t like? Not in the rules. It’s all nitpicky stuff about what gets released when. I miss my Half-Orcs, my sorcerers and kinda wish Druids were around for the initial release. Then there’re a few complaints about the monsters that aren’t out versus those that are (but more of that on day 3.) The rules? They’re damned near perfect. I have zero complaints. I’m pretty confident most folks will feel the same way once they dive in.

4E completely reinvigorated our group. It’s weird, but in creating a new edition, they found the magic that made Dungeons & Dragons what it always was. They’ve taken shovels and dug out the core of what makes the game tick and built a system that focuses on THAT. This feels like 1st edition all over again. It has everyone excited. No one skips or misses games. And when we have to cancel, it becomes a big production of attempting to reschedule before canceling. Seven people in our group and every one of us, no matter how resistant, no matter how angry about a new edition we might have been, have discovered a brand new passion for the game. There’s a lot of negativity out there right now, a lot of anger over this rule change or that rule change or the thought of all those now nigh useless books. But come June that’s going to change. People are going to see first hand how those changes work together to make a superior experience. The game is more fun and less work. And I, for one, am never going back. I am a 4E player. And I can’t wait until you guys are too.

Check in tomorrow for part 2, detailing what it’s like to run a 4E game (the new challenges and pleasures), and Saturday for part 3 going into the Monsters.

Massawyrm Reviews D&D 4E Part 2!!

Hola all. Massawyrm here.

So, now that I’ve got all the basics and the impressions out of the way. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. What was it like to run a game in 4E? Pretty freaking awesome. All this talk of simplicity goes out the window once you begin to talk about RUNNING a game. Sure, the rules are simple, but the combat tactics become a whole new ballgame for us DM’s.

But those simple rule changes do make life a hell of a lot easier. During our first game, my intrepid game designer buddy decided to throw a monkey wrench into the works by having his character dive under a table and kick it out from under two guys fighting on top of it. He smiled devilishly, looked at me and asked “How are you gonna rule that…DM?” I glanced at the book for a moment and realized “Strength check against their reflexes.” Huh. He shook his head. Made sense. He made the attack, hit the numbers and all of a sudden he had two opponents prone on the floor. The rules are so straight forward now, on the fly decisions are total cake.

And when slightly more complicated rule calls come into play, don’t worry. The way they’ve set up the rule chapters are simple, clear and pure genius. Everything in the combat chapter is alphabetized. You need the grappling rules? Turn to the G’s. How about Charging? C. And once you’re there, you’ll find that all the major rules are listed as bullet points. Any and every instance for a rule is listed separately in its own bullet point and there aren’t any more of those infamous important rules buried at the end of a paragraph somewhere in the middle of chapter 9.

The biggest change you’re going to notice is that combats are RADICALLY different than they ever have been. The idea of the single, lone monster fight is almost entirely gone. 4E is about mobs. It’s about the Gnoll hunter traveling with two Gnoll warriors and 3 hyenas. It’s about Goblins on Worg-back with a spellcaster bringing up the rear. It’s about ambushes and strange locations. It’s as much about how you’re fighting as it is what you’re fighting. Setting up the fights mechanically is a breeze. Every monster level has an XP total and there’s a simple chart that tells you what XP an encounter of a party size of X level equals. For example a 7th level party of four characters is 1200 experience points. A standard 7th level monster is 300 XP. 4 monsters of the same level equal a standard challenge for the party.

But the biggest revolution is game design for 4E is the fact that the monsters scale PERFECTLY. And so do the PCs. The amount of damage they deal and can take moves up appropriately so multiple monsters of a lower level is EQUAL in damage output and the amount it can take as a single monster of a higher level. A level 1 monster is 100XP. So 12 level 1 monsters would make a suitable encounter for a 7th level party. And yes, for those of you thinking ahead of me, this means it is very simple to mix monsters of different levels. That same party would be equally matched by a level 9 monster (400XP) and 4 level 5 monsters (200XP each.) Doing the MATH of each encounter takes seconds. The challenging part becomes being creative. How exactly will you mix and match your monsters, how will they interact together and where will you place the encounter to make it easier or tougher than the straight numbers would intimate. That right there is where things get really fun for the 4E Dungeon Master. The new rule set allows you to be positively devious without risking the dreaded TPK (total party kill.) 4E rewards the inventive DM by giving him a wide range creatures with a large range of abilities and combat roles, then turns him loose to try and find the nastiest, most dastardly ways to harass his players.

But don’t get too cocky there, Jeeves. The players have all sorts of new tools and tactics to dismantle even the cleverest of traps. Rangers SUCK. Not in the 3.x way in which they’re silly and underpowered. As a DM, you will learn to hate them because with a well placed shot they can drop your back field controller before he gets a chance to really harass your players. The days of taking it easy on the caster or ranged fighter are done and gone. You need to learn quickly how to put pressure on the party’s back field fighters or else you will watch encounter after encounter go down the same way as the tank draws fire while the healer stands him up (while doing damage herself) and the ranger/wizard blasts key opponents out of the picture. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. No. Simple, straight forward encounters comprised of four of the same monster are the way to ruin. The system may encourage complicated tactics and encounters…but clever players will simply require them.

And at the same time, character death isn’t as easy as it used to be. Level 1 characters are front loaded with hit points and abilities, so the old accidental crit by the goblin archer won’t actually kill a player. It’s a slight bit tougher than that now. And it becomes even tougher if there’s a cleric in the group. A strong, smart healer can stand up near death characters several times before they actually risk permanent death. This is going to be a big change for some folks, as the weekly “Who do we have to pay to get raised this week” becomes much less frequent (until Epic, when pretty much everyone can Res for free, on a daily basis. You get abilities that let you do cool things when you die. Swear to Pelor. Epic is weird.)

XP works a lot differently now too. EVERYTHING you do can pretty much get you XP. The big change is that Social Encounters will net you xp. Traps and puzzles are XP based rather than just CRs. And taking a tip from WoW, there are even QUEST REWARDS now. The DMG even includes suggestions on how PC’s can instigate their own quests. These are no longer vague rule suggestions – but are instead hard and fast rules that allow you to really control the rate of level progression without feeling like you’re just lumping XP on the PC’s. At the same time, the new system allows you to take the players from one level to the next without ever having to swing a sword. Not that you’d necessarily want to, but all of a sudden courtly intrigue and puzzle quest heavy campaigns are just as viable XP wise as straight hack and slash. And it’s all based on the same simple mechanics.

And nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, takes away XP anymore. No more level loss. No more XP to fuel abilities or make magic items. Nothing. In fact the book encourages you to award XP to absent players, just so everyone always has the same amount and is playing at the same level. I’ve been doing this, and the players love it. That lame idea of reward for attendance gets outweighed by the reward of everyone being equally useful. Besides, loot for attendance works just as well.

Another great aspect of 4E is the new abilities versus feats delineation. Abilities are something that the player can do ACTIVELY. This includes casting a fireball, using a tricky bow shot or healing another character. Feats on the other hand tend to modify your stats or affect what you can do PASSIVELY. The abilities are all very carefully set up with level dependant damage and scaling. You no longer have the ability to pick and choose from a number of prestige classes (thus no stacking weird combinations of class abilities), and since bonus stacking is very simple and easy these days, the chances of nasty, disgusting, broken combos is going to take a LOT of future bonehead game design and a lot of work on the part of the players. There are plenty of ways to optimize your characters – but straight up broken combos are going to become a thing of the past.

One of the things the rules stress in the DMG is to get used to saying “YES” to players. Let them try weird things and how you should try to find ways to allow it. And the ruleset seems to allow it while remaining incredibly stable. Stable really is the best way to describe it. We’ve spent four months trying to break it and we can’t. There have been a few iterations of rule interpretations that have created oddities, but the playtesting did an incredible job of tweaking those down to make sense. Hell, there was an interpretation of Stealth early on that allowed you to use another player to hide, then jump out and gain COMBAT ADVANTAGE (the 4E version of catching a character flat footed.) This led to a series of comments (and jokes) about a Halfling Rogue in the fighters backpack and ultimately led to a note from the lead developer that read “It shouldn’t work like that. We’ll fix it.” They did.

Remember all that simplicity stuff from part 1 of the review. As a DM you’re about to see why they had to make the rules so simple. It’s because your toolbox just got a lot bigger. And any more complicated and it just wouldn’t work. The great thing is that most of your preparation doesn’t involve books and math. It involves brainstorming and figuring out how to make encounters unique, fun and, yes, devilishly effective.

Then of course you have to figure out loot. Who doesn’t love loot? Well, in 4E there’s a hell of a lot less of it. It also doesn’t affect a lot of the things it used to. But it is still as important as ever. The loot rules pretty much give players a new magic item every level. And the gear gives you new abilities, protection from abilities or simply modifies your attacks or defenses. There are no more stat bump items, nor are you expected to have magic loot at certain levels. The result is a system that allows low or no magic campaigns without a lot of heartache or rule tweaking. Magic items all do COOL things. Armor doesn’t just protect you, it also gives you things to do in combat. Items you wear give you options, not bumps. And the abilities things grant make them useful for levels beyond what loot used to. There are items I can imagine being just as useful at level 20 as it was at level 4. The overall result of all of these loot changes is a system more about fantasy, character and story than it is about Min/Maxing. There’s a lot more “This is the cloak given to me by Queen Soandso and a lot less “Dude, why are you still wearing that +2 Periapt of Wisdom. You’re level 12 now.”

Oh yeah. And there’s no such thing as a magic item shop anymore. Which is fine, because they’ve finally made Crafting rules that actually make sense and don’t require calculus or the loss of XP. If you want a certain magic item, learn how to make it, and spend the gold to make it. Crafting magic items is what the gold cost is for now a days.

All in all, the game plays and runs very differently than before. It still has that classic D&D feel, but your focus as a game runner really is going in new and exciting directions. You’ll send most of your time dreaming things up rather than tallying things up. And it makes all the difference.

Tune in tomorrow for the third and final installment of this review in which I talk about the new monster manual, how monster work and my few (nit picky) gripes about the new system.

Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

Massawyrm Reviews D&D 4E Part 3!!

Hola all. Massawyrm here.

With the rebalancing of all the classes, WotC has given a static, steady progression to leveling up. No longer are there any plateau levels like level 5 (when you get Flight and Fireball) in which players get access to something radically more powerful than what they possessed just a single level before – and no longer hamstringing DM’s by what monsters are effective at one level and not the next. Monsters are now also scaled the same way. There are no more monsters that while being a specific level, possess abilities that make them completely inaccessible as opponents to lower levels. Sure, a 10th level monster will still decimate a first level party – but not because they lack the spells or abilities to so much as touch it. They’ll get their ass kicked because it is simply far more badass than they are. But there are no more monsters that a DM cannot throw against his players because they don’t have the right spell or equipment to fight it.

This opens up a whole world of opportunities and possible combinations. But more importantly, it also allows the quick and easy creation of your own monster stat blocks. Every monster is built with a simple series of equations in which you plug in their level and modify them by their role in combat and get exact, solid scores for their Hit points, damage output and defenses. Of course that doesn’t mean that every 2 nd level monster will have the same amount of hit points and do the same damage with an attack. It takes various factors into account, but if creature of a certain level should be doing five points of damage on average he could do one attack that does 5 straight damage, have an attack that does 1d8+1 or two attacks that do 1d4 a piece. You won’t notice that average of 5 damage, but it will be there hidden in the mechanics.

It takes roughly 5 minutes to stat out a new critter. Is there something missing from the MM that you love? Odds are the answer is a BIG YES (more on that in a bit.) Well, stat it out.

The first thing you’ll notice about the monsters is that they broken down into roles and toughness. The roles are pretty self explanatory and WtC has been all about talking about them. These are things like Lurkers (monsters that hide and attack from shadows or while invisible), artillery (ranged attackers), brutes (big damage dealers), soldiers (tanks), and controllers (spellcasters and creatures with abilities that allow them to move players around or hinder their movement.) A good monster mob has a healthy mix of two or three of these types. This isn’t so much of a game altering change as much as it is just a great system for eyeballing what a given encounter needs or what a creatures stats look like.

The big change is really the new classifications of monster power level. You’ve got Minions, Elite and Solo types as extra modifiers. Elites are just pretty much twice as tough as your average monster. There’s both listings for Elite monsters and rules for beefing one up to Elite (for example having a group of 3 Ogres led by a super tough Ogre Chief.) Solos are pretty self explanatory – they’re meant to be fought alone or only with a little help. These are your dragons, your aspects of deities, or super tough large monsters. Solo’s have proven to be the trickiest to work with as you have to choose just the right point in the adventuring day to unleash them on your party. Too late in the day and they don’t have enough powerful daily abilities left to take it out – too early and they have too man, stacking status effect after status effect on it to the point of silliness. You haven’t encountered 4E frustration until you’ve put a Red Dragon as an early encounter and watched him hobbled, slowed, dazed and covered in ongoing damage before he gets to round 2.

But my favorite addition so far is minions. These are super weak monsters that amount to an average of 4 monsters to a character of equal level. But this by no means is to say that they don’t pose any kind of threat. Quite often they can do much more damage when attacking en masse. These are your zombie hordes or your weak demon spawn and the like. Our very first game began in a tavern, with a brawl (yes, the cliché) but was interrupted by a woman bursting through the door screaming. Two zombies rushed in after her and tore her apart. Our brave fighter rushed forward, hacked them to pieces and threw open the door ready for 2 or 3 more. Only to discover 2 dozen zombies shambling toward her.

Overkill? Not in 4E. 24 Zombie Rotters are a standard encounter for 6 level 1 PCs. You don’t HAVE to run minion fights that large, but man are they a good time. They make your PCs feel highly effective as they drop zombie after zombie beneath their feet, but also prove tactically challenging as they have to fight off swarms with completely different tactics. It also lets you have a little fun by replacing several of the minions with a regular fighter type of the same monster. Why are there only 13 zombies this time? Because one of them is a level 3 nasty. Guess which one it is before it eats your cleric.

Most of your time as Dungeon master will be spent on two things: planning the story of your game and planning the monster and tactic selection. It really is challenging. 4E fights really have a different feel. It’s not about running across some random fight anymore. It’s about planning, it’s about strategy, it’s about the fun or frustration of the big beat down. You are encouraged to get exotic – and that equals fun for all.

So I’ve been incredibly positive up until now. I know there’s many of you out there who have got to be wondering if there’s anything about 4E that I don’t like. Yes. There is, but it’s almost all entirely nit picky stuff about what they chose to release. Personally, I’m just a wee bit annoyed that certain monsters were held back for other monster manuals – especially in lieu of the fact that there are quite a few new editions to the core monsters.

Dungeon & Dragon Miniatures fans (like myself) will be happy to know that several of your favorite minis have been added to the core book. The awesome Boneclaw is core, the Kruthik has worked its way in, and Flameskulls have two different incarnations (one Heroic and one Epic.) But there are no metallic dragons in the core MM. And while Metallics have for the longest time been GOOD creatures, the new 4E lack of standard alignment allows you to be pitted against ANYTHING as long as there’s a good reason for it. No more ALWAYS LG means a crazed, deluded or simply ornery Silver dragon could actually be an opponent for the party. But not on release it can’t. The lack of certain classic giants like the Frost Giants is a bit lame – they include Death Giants, but not Frost? But don’t worry, Fire, Hill and Storm all make appearances. It’s not that there are bad choices and aditions – it’s just that you have to ask why a whole section on Kruthiks but not one on the metallics. I’ll trade you know. It’s not called Dungeons and Kruthiks.

Then there are dragons. First of all, dragons ROCK. Every chromatic dragon fights and plays much differently than each and every other type now and they are ALL nasty. Every last one of them. AND, just to sweeten the deal, there are now real, honest to god dragon encounters set as low as level 3. Yes, you can actually fight a white dragon in a tough fight at level 1. That’s pretty damned awesome, once again deserving its title Dungeons & Dragons. So what’s wrong with dragons? Well, for starters, there is longer any dragons smaller than LARGE size. To many of you that won’t mean anything. But to those of us who have collected Dungeons and dragon Minis from way back in harbinger – we’ve just gotten screwed. I have a whole drawer of small and medium dragons that no longer serve any use. I mean, I guess I can paint them and use them as drakes. But not as dragons. Especially since many of them weren’t exactly easy to come by. That got me a little pissy.

Which leads to the one glaring problem some folks will have with 4E. It is very dependant upon maps, terrain and miniatures. That’s great for guys like me with a closet full of toys. But for others, especially those who like to play much more esoteric games all through discussion rather than using maps and positioning – they’re going to find it a lot harder to covert over to that style of play than 3.5. Most abilities and classes are built around their existence on a map grid. And a lot of the abilities just don’t translate to the abstract. I’m not certain why percentage of players out there still play this way – but they’re going to have the strongest argument against converting to 4E.

But for me these really are some minor gripes compared to the sheer number of mechanics that 4E has fixed. There are no more wallflowers in combats. No more totaling up each players loot to make sure they are equally matched to the monsters they’ll be facing. No more resting before the party needs to. No more “Why can’t I buy this magic item anywhere”. No more broken min/maxing. No more all human parties because the free feat and skill point are worth more. There are a thousand little things that are streamlined, that are better. And once people have had the chance to sit down with it, all the prerelease gripes will go away. It really is like digging into 1st Ed all over again.

This weekend WotC is taking the muzzle off of us playtesters, so over the next few days and weeks, sites will be flooded with all the details. I’m dying to see how closely other groups experiences match my own – but I’m also confident that we’re about to see a lot of positivity out there. This is a great game. Whether you’re a long time player or an online gamer looking for a little more face time with your friends, 4E has a lot to offer the table top community. It’s a revelation and a revolution. And it’s gong to change the way you play forever.

Man I can’t wait to have these in hardback.