5punk

Nope, sorry, cant do it. Any review I give of D&D4 would be tainted by terrible prejudice.

To be fair to the game, my main beefs with it are only there because I used to play D&D. If I had never played any roll play game before, or even if I had just never played D&D before, I wouldnt be as bothered. But its sprinkled with things that make me physically recoil. For example:

They have removed Chaotic good and Lawfull evil from the alignments players can choose. For fucks sake, why? I can think of no logical reason for doing this, other than "the designers think the players brains are not complex enough to cope".

Gear is assigned "slots". Your character has a head slot. If you dont immediately understand why that is bad and stupid, I dont think I could explain it to you.

There appears to be three different kinds of elves you can play. Theres half elves (fair enough), elves (ok), and what can only be described as some sort of super elf: more elfy than regular elves. Elf+. Just no.

There are less than 20 skills. Thats all the skills you can have. Not just the maximum your character is allowed, but the entire skill listing.

It goes on like that, but I cant bring myself to read it. Like I say, it seems like it might be a perfectly reasonable system for people who dont know that theres better things available. I'll stick with 3.5 for the moment, thank you.

Joose wrote: Gear is assigned "slots". Your character has a head slot. If you dont immediately understand why that is bad and stupid, I dont think I could explain it to you..

sorry not played any p&p games, but had a look at some and wanting to play but Im not sure what you mean mate?

Joose wrote:They have removed Chaotic good and Lawfull evil from the alignments players can choose.

That's silly.

Joose wrote:There are less than 20 skills. Thats all the skills you can have. Not just the maximum your character is allowed, but the entire skill listing.

However, this convinced me.

3.5 it is. <s>Books plz!</s>
Google search and file sharing sites, a surprisingly effective combination.

The 'slot' thing is silly if you consider that MMORPGs are based on pen & paper RPGs, so for the latter to adopt something used in the former, which was only there as a mechanism for the computer medium, it seems slightly ridiculous. However, it's just a name; call it 'hat' instead, and suddenly you have a more diverse armour system where instead of just having a suit of magic armour, you can have armour, helmet, and whatever else all with different magics.

Similarly with the skills, AD&D never had that many. Certainly 1st and 2nd edition didn't, and it didn't really seem to suffer for it. It just was what it was, and there's not a huge amount of skills you actually needed.

However, things I do disagree with are simplification of the alignment systems by just removing ones that might be confusing (I think those are actually my words over xfire Joose used) - removing chaotic good and lawful evil insinuates that chaotic is inherently evil and lawful is inherently good, which is not the case.

Also, having some classes or races blatantly better than others is a bad decision. True, roleplayers will play what they fancy, and having strengths and weaknesses, even unbalanced ones, can be an aid to that. But this seems like a beginner's system, and by having one race obviously more powerful with no disadvantages just encourages powergaming.

I'll have a look at it tonight and see what I think. I've not played since 2nd edition, and I wasn't a hige fan of the whole thing in the end (mainly due to overexposure admittedly).

If I do one, it won't be for a while. I want to plan a really good story out.
Hopefully it will be one you want to play, and not just 'generic fantasy'.

As for alignment systems, I find something like this really useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_system

Grimmie wrote:As for alignment systems, I find something like this really useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_system

That's the AD&D one, adopted by many. I prefer your alignment to reflect your actions rather than dictating them though. Ref Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good;

Lawful Evil: Acts with structure, but to maliciously cause distress and pain. A tyrant or dictator, fascism is lawful evil.

Chaotic good: Acts without structure or rules, but wants to be benevolent to those around them. Like a hippy.

Actually, screw the PDFs, they're hard enough to scroll through.
Anyone know where I can get all three core books for D&D 3.5?

Is D&D 3.5 the same as AD&D 3.5? Confused.

I think they dropped the A after a point, I think it's the same game. The original D&D was pretty simple and based on a wargame, AD&D was more of an RPG. I presume the A was dropped again because nobody every played D&D and so they ditched that version of the game.

The biggest RPG site I know of is Paizo, although I don't know if they sell hard copies or just PDFs.

Afaik AD&D is just the name for the D&D 2nd ed. rules. And as for getting rid of Chaotic Good, I always play the hippy.

Edit: After thinking about this for a few minutes, I think they got rid of the wrong allignments. Get rid of the two no one plays right, Chaotic Evil and True Neutral. These two I've never seen anyone play properly. CE peoples should be stealing/lieing/everything else to party members, and for TN, how can you progress taking the center on everything, most campaigns require you to pick some sort of side or why adventure? CG is easy, you do what you feel is right no matter what the rules say about it, and LE.... well I guess they got rid of the evil pallies too then.

Having had a quick skim through the 4th ed player's handbook, I can certainly say it's different. It's been simplified, made more accessible. It's definately designed more towards starting players. However, I'm not finding it as bad as Joose does. I like the way spells now work (one crap healing spell per day is hard work at low levels), having spells for magic types and abilities for fighter types which can be used a certain amount per encounter, or per day, or whenever you like, depending on what it is. Yes, it smells a little like an MMO, but it adds an element of tactics to a fight over and above "I'll hit it with my sword" and "Should I use my one spell yet?". I didn't really notice that any race was more powerful than any other - in fact they're all kind of the same with a similar bonus to different attributes and a few different racial skills.

I do get what Joose means about it feeling like a pen and paper MMO, but I'm not going tobe put off by that right off. After all, MMOs have had some good ideas since 2nd edition AD&D was published in the 80s.

I'll create a character (always a good indication of a game's complexity and feel), and read through the books some more before making a judgement on it, but I wouldn't just dismiss it out of hand.

EDIT: On the alignment thing, it's completely changed. They've kind of done away with neutral. You get:

Good - Sort of a mix of neutral good and chaotic good, doing the right thing above all else
Lawful Good - Same as before, with more emphasis on lawful
Unaligned - Pretty much true neutral
Chaotic Evil - Same as before, hellbent on destruction and chaos
Evil - Will go to any lengths for personal gain

I think my main issues with it, now ive had time to recover from the initial horror are:

1) Stylistically, I just dont like it. The MMOification, the cheesy WoW style art, even the books layout are not great. Of course, a lot of that is entirely down to personal taste.

2) Its a lot more restrictive. You seem to be led a lot more in character development and the like, rather than letting you do what you want with your character

3) It seems to be almost entirely focussed on combat. Dont get me wrong, I like my combat, but there seems to be little in there that isnt about making things dead. Where has the R gone from the RPG?

Its not that it is intrinsically bad (apart from the style, which is a personal thing that others may like), bust that its not what I want from a game.

Yes, it smells a little like an MMO, but it adds an element of tactics to a fight over and above "I'll hit it with my sword" and "Should I use my one spell yet?".

As someone who once used the "Turn liquid" spell in the middle of a fight to kill someone, I think the old system had tactics if you were inventive

Tou try to counter that, then;

1) Yes, I agree that it has an MMO style. The artwork does feel very Warcraft, and the layout isn't great. I'd have been quite lost creating a character if it hadn't been for the nagic excel sheet I downloaded. That's not unusual, although a step-by-step guide just ending after you've allocated stats is quite frustrating.

2) You're not led particularly in character creation, more advised. For a first character this is handy, as you'll otherwise be likely to gimp yourself. It's certainly less restrictive than 2e, which told you what your character did once you chose your class. Paragon classes offer nice advancement choices every 10 levels, although a level cap of 30 seems restrictive. I think characters in a forum campaign are unlikely to get that far though.

3) All versions I've played of D&D have been combat orientated. I think 2e had maybe a dozen skills, of which you might have had about three, and of which you barely used any. You can still roleplay, but the GM has more leeway. Roleplay has nothing to do with the rules anyway.

I'm not saying I love the system. I agree that the style seems a bit lowest common denominator, and I'm not entirely sure I like all these feats and attacks and stuff. I don't like the races much either. But the basic system isn't bad, it's easy to play, and so it's easy to run for a GM who might not be as well versed in running a game.

Dog Pants wrote:But the basic system isn't bad, it's easy to play, and so it's easy to run for a GM who might not be as well versed in running a game.

Not saying its a bad system as such, I just dont see any way in which its better than 3.5. And the style makes me want to lick electrical sockets.

I need to have a look at 3.5 then.

Dog Pants wrote:Good - Sort of a mix of neutral good and chaotic good, doing the right thing above all else
Lawful Good - Same as before, with more emphasis on lawful
Unaligned - Pretty much true neutral
Chaotic Evil - Same as before, hellbent on destruction and chaos
Evil - Will go to any lengths for personal gain

That does make a kind of sense. Neutral (of either) was always a bit tricky to play - I recall in NWN druids lost their neutral bonuses if they did a few good deeds without some evil ones to balance them out.

A chaotic good character might be your Robin Hood type - breaking the laws of a cruel overlord - but they're not deliberately unlawful just unmindful of the law.

FatherJack wrote:A chaotic good character might be your Robin Hood type - breaking the laws of a cruel overlord - but they're not deliberately unlawful just unmindful of the law.

Dont forget though that "lawfull" didnt always mean the law of the land, it just meant rules in general.

So they were German.

Joose wrote:Gear is assigned "slots". Your character has a head slot. If you dont immediately understand why that is bad and stupid, I dont think I could explain it to you.

You'd still better go ahead and try.

Joose wrote:Dont forget though that "lawfull" didnt always mean the law of the land, it just meant rules in general.

Laws of the Universe, even. I think my example is the one they gave in the 2nd Ed as Neutral Good, rather than Chaotic Good. Their definition of that was rather wooly, saying it's someone who has no use for rules - but properly should be someone who goes out of their way to live somewhere lawless or to break rules, perhaps a hermit, or constantly-travelling heretic/prophet.

Chaotic Neutral is another one that's gone, which I think was mostly people who are completely mad, or at least very mercurial, and Lawful Neutral was just a robot.

Baliame wrote:You'd still better go ahead and try.

Dog Pants wrote:The 'slot' thing is silly if you consider that MMORPGs are based on pen & paper RPGs, so for the latter to adopt something used in the former, which was only there as a mechanism for the computer medium, it seems slightly ridiculous.

Regarding the alignments, it would probably have been more consistent just to have chaotic and lawful rather than chaotic evil and lawful good. I knew several GMs who banned chaotic neutral characters for being too disruptive, as people who wanted to mess about and try to derail the campaign seemed to gravitate towards it and act even worse.