Still Reading 4th Edition - A Few Thoughts
written by Donat P. Fevre
July 15th, 2008 · 8 Comments
Alright, I’ll admit that I’ve been slow with reading through the 4th Edition core rulebooks. I’m still trudging my way through the player classes in the Player’s Handbook. However, I guess this can be a good indicator of how dry the reading can get, at least as far as reading all the powers go. 
However, given what I have read so far, I do have a few thoughts concerning 4th Edition.
- There’s not much to customizing your character’s class. Once you choose your class, you’re pretty much stuck with a set amount of things you can do. The biggest problem I’ve noticed is with the fighter. About every single fighter power depends on a melee weapon. What ever happened to creating a ranged fighter?
- Is it feasible anymore to make a dexterity-based ranger that uses two weapons with weapon finesse? I’ll admit that I haven’t read the feats chapter yet, but given that the powers for rangers who specialize in 2 weapon fighting are dependent on strength, it seems that dexterity melee fighters aren’t all that feasible.
- Whatever happened to being able to change up your spell list for the in game day? Not only were wizards able to do this in previous editions, but also clerics, druids, rangers, and paladins. The only ones who really couldn’t (of the core classes at least) were the sorcerers. In 4th edition, every spell casting class is limited by the number of powers known, instead of classes like sorcerer. Furthermore, all spell casting classes are limited to using more powerful spells once per encounter, or even once per day. Whatever happened to memorizing fireball for multiple uses?! (However, I have yet to reach rituals, so I don’t know how those go exactly yet.)
Those are so far my thoughts I’ve collected from my own reading of the new ruleset. I’ve gotten some thoughts and opinions from you guys in comments on previous posts on 4th Edition. Has anything new come up for you all since then?
[By the way, yes, I'm a day late for this post. I've been particularly busy lately, from looking for jobs to managing some clan related things for TeamBöNK. Sorry. 
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Topics: D&D General
1. Fighters are a defender class, meaning it’s their job to get into melee and stay in melee. Ranged attacks, by definition, should be a fighter’s last resort. If you want to play a fighter who uses ranged attacks, play a rogue or ranger. Just because the class is called “Fighter” doesn’t mean anyone who thinks of themself as a fighter has to pick that class.
Although all the classes have some built in flavor, it’s really not intrinsic to it. There’s no reason a rogue or ranger can’t have a military background and be described as an agile soldier.
2. Can’t comment. I suspect not.
3. Wizards have a limited spellbook, in that they get 2 (or, if they take a feat, 3) choices of daily spells for each slot, and they choose which daily spell to fill that slot in.
Yea fighters are no longer ranged people, but that has a lot more to do with their role, in the group. You can’t really be a defender type if you use a bow. It will never be an archer who holds the front line in a battle. Look more at the roles to get an idea of what they should and could be. Besides that; look at the multiclass feats for doing combos of classes, so you can have an archer fighter.
The other thing to look at here with customizing, is that when you want to add a feature to the class you really only want that feature, you don’t want to change the role you play in the party, like being a striker, or leader. If you do then you probably are bored of that character type and should just make a new one. I just made a cleric who i wanted to be sneaky, and perceptive, so I took two skill training feats, now i am a sneaky leader. I made a fighter that i wanted to use acrobatics, so I cross classed with ranger. I get the added bonus of adding more damage to one attack. This customized my character, but i am still a defender, which i wanted.
About your DEX ranger what do you want him to do? If you pick the right powers for your attacks, although you use STR to attack and do damage, you look like a nimble fighter.
Last you were taking about changing out spells, i think again this has more to do with the flavor of the wizard and what the role of the class is. There is only one controller at this moment but i kind of feel that wizards should be the planners as they study all the time, and everyone else is granted powers. I also feel that the controllers are “controllers” because they have more control on there choices.
Really i say play it, one of the cool things i discovered as i played is how much it is a team game, and if you don’t take your role in the group seriously, you can hurt the group no one can really stand alone. Run and see if the game is as fun. It is hard to look at just the rules.
I agree with Dasis: Play It. At first there was much whinning about 4E is like a PnP MMORPG. And then we played it. As the DM of my group — i can’t tell you how much I am loving 1) having a group of L1 heroes pitted against 10 or 12 goblins (minions rule!); and 2)the look on the faces of the munchkins in my group that were like “Oh /cry, I wanna exotic weapon master Dex fighter with a spiked chain who controls a 20′ area with his threat”. They way they have revamped Reach alone is sweet. So far, my group is loving the new ruleset. Our campaign still “plays like D&D” only combat is resolved faster, and there’s more time for story development (aka roleplaying).
Nice blog btw, I’ve added your feed to my site’s Blog Roll.
Is it just me or with the limited Wizard powers and hardly any rituals… would every wizard basically see the same after a few sessions…
what happened to all the masses of spells that added variety and flavor?
Most low level wizards are pretty similar up to about level 3 - then things start to branch out. As far as the rituals are concerned, you might interested in something I posted over at The Core Mechanic just the other day as an optional ruling, etc.
New 4E Rituals
As with anything to do with dnd, you have to customize it to fit your style. For instance, you want a Dex based ranger. Take the powers from the class and change them to fit your character. As long as you don’t mess with the numbers too much- such as damage and attack bonuses- there is no limit to the options available to you.
Wizards did not intend for you to be limited by the powers shown in the stats for each character. Spice them up any way you want; whether it be flavor- e.g. green flaming skull instead of a fireball- or how you want the power to work dex. vs AC instead of Str. vs AC, etc. etc. Hope this helps
So far I find the same fault with D&D that I do with most online games and life in general.
Everyone is overly concerned with balancing things and making things fast and easy. The damnable rule of cool is too stupid to deserve to live. Someone pith that frog brain and make some art.
I used to love the insane imbalances and mysterious characters you could make in old school D&D and that was just by the books, let alone your own customization. Complex, realistic, and unbalanced situations make things interesting.
I like 4e D&D well enough but as some of the previous posters suggest indirectly it makes everyone way too much the same. There ought to be 15 powers for each choice you make. I know they limited it because they didn’t want to exhaust the game dynamic and they wanted symmetry far too much. I think that really reflects more on their lack of imagination as well as their driving need to make more profits. If they create a truly visionary open-ended game people wouldnt need more sourcebooks and new inflated powers to get their dumb rocks off.
I think the most enjoyable aspect of P&P roleplaying is the storytelling aspect. This is best adjudicated with skills and not during combats. Yet every time D&D puts out a new skill system they reduce the number of skills and wipe out entire realms of nuance and situational variance. Its extremely sad that so many people keep extolling the virtues of such systems that make social gaming more and more like an arcade game every with every version change.
It Sounds like they’re trying to make Wizards how they where in Basic D&D. Where you chose one spell and you kept that spell for the rest of eternity if you where a Wizard, unless you found some sort of scroll, which you could then use. And you couldn’t add the scroll into your spell book, either. So Wizards where limited until higher levels, and even then where still fairly limited (although quite powerful).