I'll wait until the 4.5 books come out with all the errata next year, when they release Eberron.

I see you're deluded into thinking that WotC will get it right the first time...

with their record... <smirk>

No offense Urza (I know you from CK), but those are some high hopes your sportin' there.

If they released a 3.5 and it paid off, there is no way in hell they will NOT release a 4.5, needed or not.

And the fact that they are splitting the rules up even further between books (only a few core classes in the first PHB, Dragons getting two {or more} of their own monster books, DMGs every year, etc) really leaves with me with very little interest in the new 'pocket-picking' edition. We aren't getting 'more', we are now getting less per book, forcing us to buy more then 3 books now to get the 'complete game'.

Besides, I prefer to get kissed before I'm.......

Arrrgh! this keeps happening when I go to edit a post - sorry for the DP.

zacharythefirst wrote:

That must be one handsome slipcase.

For that price I would want the DM screen and the Character record sheets, and a set of Dice.

Who really carries, I just want the product at the lowest price possiable. If it takes a day or 2 more so be it.

I pre-ordered the gift set on Amazon for $57. That's pretty much half price!

Got them from my local store for $99, gotta support the little guy. So far after glancing I am a little confused, but I hope it will be easier than thac0. I like the skills, hum reminds me of 2nd edition. And where are the half-orcs? Just me 2 cents.

I also want to know why it was dumbed down.

Is the binding better? Cause I would pay for better binding. The binding on my 3.5 core books is destroyed, and it hasn't been that long since they were bought.

If the binding's not better... $35 more than buying them individually????

Is the binding better? Cause I would pay for better binding.

The binding on my 3.5 core books is destroyed, and it hasn't been that long since they were bought.

i played in a demo of the new rules two weeks ago and loved it. i wouldn't say it was dumbed down so much as simplified. They pulled out much of the BS of the earlier versions. They also made the classes more useful. Fighters rarely just "attack", and wizards always have something they can do. Combat went much faster and there was greater cooperation and interaction between the players. In 3.5 games my groups rare coordinated anything, they all pretty much did whatever. In the demo we were talking across the table constantly. The simplification has an additional benefit: a shallow learning curve makes the game more accessible for people who would otherwise be turned off by all the rules. It will appeal more to girls and younger players, and even to players of the rules light games like WoD.

i'm buying my set from Wal Mart or Amazon. Paizo, seriously, get with the program. i'll take the $50 i saved by buying from Amazon to buy a fourth book.

i'm buying my set from Wal Mart or Amazon. Paizo, seriously, get with the program. i'll take the $50 i saved by buying from Amazon to buy a fourth book.

I see you're deluded into thinking that WotC will get it right the first time...

with their record... <smirk>

No offense Urza (I know you from CK), but those are some high hopes your sportin' there.

If they released a 3.5 and it paid off, there is no way in hell they will NOT release a 4.5, needed or not.

1. Errata etc. will be addressed in the online versions of the rule books which will receive updates (imagine something like online errata, but already included in the downloadable pdf versions of the core books).

2. It's not as if not every previous edition didn't have similarities: about half a dozen monster handbooks in 3.5e, 2 DMGs in 3.5, 2 PHBs (and even more if you add the "complete" series) in 3.5e, the same in 2e and in 1e... It's a different labeling of the books, but basically it's the same.

You complain that some of your favourite classes were left out in 4e? Have a look back at 2e: gone were the monk and the chevalier from 1e. On the other hand for the first time in quite some time the 4e PHB really seems to contain all player relevant information and doesn't "outsource" part of it to the DMG.

Every edition has its shortcomings (including 4e), but please don't invent reasons against your most hated edition just in order to deliver more ammunition.

P.S.
This is not aimed against anyone specific, I am just sick of the hypocrisy to be found too often in any thread concerning favourite editions. I would like to get some real information which helps me to final assess the value of 4e...

Paizo, seriously, get with the program. i'll take the $50 i saved by buying from Amazon to buy a fourth book.

-Lisa

I pre-ordered the gift set on Amazon for $57. That's pretty much half price!

Thoth-Amon

It is over simplified and over priced. It is combat oriented only and all powers or spells are all too similar. It seems to want to simulate an online MMORPG but falls way too short for that as well. Characters have too few abilities and the abilities are too limited in their effect to be diverse. Some races and classes are not included anymore. The one thing I was looking forward to was the 3D online part but even that is too expensive. For $10 a month I might as well be playing a real MMORPG. My only guess for the new direction is to get new players who play online in some way or another, and introduce them to table top. Then sucker them in to buying one new book after another, that makes up for the limited scope the first books cover. I can only hope that the fan boys, who think Wizards can do no wrong, sell their 3.5 stuff to used book stores so I can rake them in at a cheap price. In my discussion with others on the 4.0 D&D all veteran gamers agree that it sucks. The DM's Guide does not ever talk about spells. If it outlined ways to make new spells the game would be better. I feel like it is a new Lego set and all the pieces are glued together. The one good thing about the game is the Monster Manual. They have been created with multiple power levels so they will last longer as a viable encounter. They talked about extending the sweet spot for spell casters. Well that is easily done with things like wands, scrolls, rods and staffs. Sorry, I was really hoping for better.

xredjasonx wrote:

I pre-ordered the gift set on Amazon for $57. That's pretty much half price!

So did i. It was scheduled for shipment on Friday, June 6th, of 2008. What's my point? It is now Saturday, the 7th, and i just received word via email, from Amazon, that my order has a new shipment date... 2-3 weeks. That's the end of the month! I'd love to cancel for i feel they let me down, but i did save 50 bucks. Very inconvenient for me and my fellow players, but whadya do?

Thoth-Amon

It will appeal more to girls and younger players, and even to players of the rules light games like WoD.

Also for what it's worth I know lots of people who prefer these kind of games (or indeed prefer none-combat orientated complex games which is what I'd classify most WoD stuff as), they're no more interested in 4e than they were in 3.5. If anything all the hordes of abilities written in short-form statblocks that can't be read without looking up how to read them first and can only be used in combat puts them off even more.

Sadly I don't think 4e is going to attract many female gamers either, as a rule you won't attract as many female players with a heavily combat-orientated system as you will with something that puts equal emphasis on combat, social and skill elements, obviously that's a stereotype, but there's a degree of truth to it, which is why it's a real shame in some ways that D&D is the only well known RPG out there. Younger gamers I can possibly give you, time will tell.

So did i. It was scheduled for shipment on Friday, June 6th, of 2008. What's my point? It is now Saturday, the 7th, and i just received word via email, from Amazon, that my order has a new shipment date... 2-3 weeks. That's the end of the month! I'd love to cancel for i feel they let me down, but i did save 50 bucks. Very inconvenient for me and my fellow players, but whadya do?

Thoth-Amon

Didn't plan running a campaign for a while anyways, so its no big deal, I'd rather save the 50 bucks. My DM paid $15 more than me to get his books early too, which I wasn't willing to do.

Auto-regenerating fighters - Are you referring to healing surge? If so, you've missed the point. Healing surges represent a character taking a moment to get their breath, instead of moving or attacking. Stop comparing 4 to 3 so much. If you don't look at it as a new game, of course you'll be confused. HP represents more than just toughness.

well-hidden Vancian magic system - Isn't "at-will" the OPPOSITE of Vancian casting? AFAIK the only Vancian spells are the per day type.

Unfortunately applied to all classes now - i liked this. It means fighters do more than swing.

forget how to use them until you take a 5 minutes rest - No, you're just too tired to use them again until you take a rest. In earlier versions you had to rest a full night's sleep. Or some abilities could be used endlessly. It was arbitrary. Wizards where useless once they blew their load of spells. Now they are useful all day long. It makes sense that some actions are too strenuous to do over and over. Which can do more times? Bench press your weight or do push ups? You might need to take a breather before benching your weight again. But you could prolly do 10 or so push ups without a sweat.

5 star reviewers", are you getting paid to write down "designers' own words" - Argument to motive. That's very cynical of you. What if some of us genuinely LIKE the new edition? Are you so arrogant that you can't imagine people thinking in a way contrary to yours? Try the game again with a GM and players you like. That's what matters most anyway.

Use your IMAGINATION! Why do you continually need a company to tell you how to play D&D? - Not everyone can or wants to invent a new RPG, or to write settings, crank out hundreds of spells or monsters. There are plenty of people using their imagination to make d20 material. That's the beauty of the OGL. Even annoying pricks can publish and even SELL their imagination. Go to a big game store and look around. My local shop has 100s of d20 books, only about 1/3rd of them are from WotC.

WotC is a business, if they stop making products they stop earning money. Then they fire people. Then game devs have to take soul crushing day jobs. Also, each version improves upon the last (despite the cries to the contrary here).

There is no roleplay in the game, from 2nd Advanced D&D it's now just D&D. - The amount of ROLE play comes from the people at the table. The rules are not fundamentally different from version one. The books still provide what D&D was meant to be: a tactical battle simulation. Read up on the history of D&D. If role playing occurs, it comes from the PLAYERS not the books.

It is over simplified and over priced - What you call over simplified, i call placed within the reach of more people. Maybe with this edition, gaming won't be such a sausage fest. Over priced? Maybe, but look at the change in quality over the editions. RPGs don't sell enough copies to be cheap. If WotC could sell twice as many books the price for each book would be lower. Instead of getting a black and white book with pictures drawn by the writer's girlfriend and edited by Clippy, you get full color pages with a durable binding and so on.

I feel like it is a new Lego set and all the pieces are glued together - The same could be said of any edition. WotC won't barge into your game and say "You can't be a teifling paladin!". Do the same thing you've done with all the other editions. Keep what you like, tweak what you don't.

Just wanted to Chime in here, I would say if you haven't already made the mistake of purchasing the 4th Edition D&D books save your money. The only thing that is really worth anything in them is the new art work. If you are looking for a real D&D game this ain't it. I bought all three books and DMed one session with my group and thought there was promise. I even played one of the D&D experience demos and enjoyed it. It seems that the character design is made for Characters to look like they rock in 4th edition at first level (I wonder if they made it this way just for the demos where people would be playing first level characters. Don't get me wrong I really wanted to like 4th edition I wanted it to be the game that Wizards said it was going to be in all the hype but it isn't.

After making up a few characters and reading through a good portion of the players handbook and running a part of "The Keep on the Shadowfell" I almost feel as if Wizard's no matter what they own legally has lost the right to call this creation D&D. Don't get me wrong there are certain things that I liked. I liked the way the races were presented and the fact that they had only bonuses to certain ability scores and no negatives. I liked the new skill system, and I liked rituals. The real game breaker for me was the powers and the magic items. Even characters of 30th level that you would think would be dripping powers out of their pores had like two at will powers, about 4 encounter powers, 4 daily powers and 7 utility (non-combat stuff mostly) powers. They did get quite a few feats and some of the powers did work in interesting ways but it is like they wrote a book that was supposed to be D&D and pulled the powers system (which is central to the game) out of Magic the Gathering or something.

Magic items were a great disappointment as well... everybody likes cool and interesting magic items in a D&D game right? Well the magic items had cool names... some of them allowed you to do stuff like use one of the healing surges that your character already had, but couldn't use unless it was triggered by a power or something. Gauntlets of ogre power granted a strength enhancement bonus all of the time to everything EXCEPT strength based attacks, nope but they did have a DAILY power that allowed you to get like a +5 bonus to Strength based attacks ONCE per day from a magic item. These kind of things are all over the place in the powers, and magic items. The game is also so miniatures centric that most of the powers would be impossible to track effectively without the use of minis. I use minis but I like the freedom to choose to use them or not. Wizards has made something with a lot of cool D&D looking art but whatever it is it ain't D&D it is a Collectible card game without the cards and with a little bit of RPG attached. Nope I think the Paizo in their Pathfinder Game are the people who are making the Real D&D game. So you have been informed buy the D&D 4th edition books at your own risk.

Charles

I can't believe I don't like it. I've liked all the other versions, but this one just isn't the D&D I love. Oh well, 3.5 is still going strong thankfully.

My advice is to spend $94.46 on other products from Paizo. The MMO influence was bad enough but the convergence with their insistence of using miniatures (THEIR miniatures, mind you)that has lead to a disastrously executed 4th edition.

The game is slick "looking" and I give them props for having play tested the heck out of it...and there are some new ideas that are interesting, but it is otherwise rotten.

In reading the "example" of role playing, I was struck with the juvenile nature of the dialog and was reminded of the Dead Alewives radio play "Dungeons and Dragons!"...

It was nice knowing you D&D. Maybe 5th edition will return to a semblance of an RPG game. If so, I will see you then. But until then, I will stick to other games and game systems (and keep with 3.x).

Will this new system attract new players? Sure. Are they the kind of players the hobby needs? The jury is still out on that one.

Anthrorob...
p.s. I do own the slip cover set and have read through the rules. I had to refer to the character sheet for some rules (such as how much a healing surge is)...there are some issues with this game that cannot be "patched"...Most MMOs are unsuccessful and disappear after the initial hype. Is that the fate of D&D 4ed? Time will tell.

I see you're deluded into thinking that WotC will get it right the first time...

with their record... <smirk>

No offense Urza (I know you from CK), but those are some high hopes your sportin' there.

If they released a 3.5 and it paid off, there is no way in hell they will NOT release a 4.5, needed or not.

And the fact that they are splitting the rules up even further between books (only a few core classes in the first PHB, Dragons getting two {or more} of their own monster books, DMGs every year, etc) really leaves with me with very little interest in the new 'pocket-picking' edition. We aren't getting 'more', we are now getting less per book, forcing us to buy more then 3 books now to get the 'complete game'.

Besides, I prefer to get kissed before I'm.......

The more I read my 4e books, the more I look forward to Pathfinder.

Walmart has it for $58.64 (after shipping). i don't know which is worse, giving any money to Walmart or paying and extra $20.

RM

The more I read 4E the happier I am to be able to DM such an intuitive and enjoyable 4E Golarion campaign, where a hero need not be defined by his magic items anymore.

I miss the barbarian and druid, but we'll get them eventually.

Todd Starbuck wrote:

Walmart has it for $58.64 (after shipping). i don't know which is worse, giving any money to Walmart or paying and extra $20.

Where abouts in Waldoworld did you find that? The magazine/book section? Just odd to hear Walmart & D&D in the same sentence, just not a combo you see everyday.

Haldir wrote:

Todd Starbuck wrote:

Walmart has it for $58.64 (after shipping). i don't know which is worse, giving any money to Walmart or paying and extra $20.

Where abouts in Waldoworld did you find that? The magazine/book section? Just odd to hear Walmart & D&D in the same sentence, just not a combo you see everyday.

It's on their website.

When I read 4e, I find it to be a breath of fresh air away from the brokenation that was 3.5 in it's entirety. With all the unbalancing books adding player options to the point of breaking the game, and the tedium of having casters ruling the battlefield, 4th edition finally balances things for the better.

4e still encourages roleplaying like it's lesser cousin 3.5, moreso perhaps, and the game is, in my opinion, superior to what it once was. I'm glad that gamers have 4th edition to finally pull themselves away from the problems of 3.5. Pathfinder? Count me out. Arbitrary house rules do NOT make a new D&D and definitely do not solve its internal problems.

4e 4ever!

Anaxxius

When I read 4e, I find it to be a breath of fresh air away from the brokenation that was 3.5 in it's entirety. With all the unbalancing books adding player options to the point of breaking the game, and the tedium of having casters ruling the battlefield, 4th edition finally balances things for the better.

Also, look up the word arbitrary. Seriously, Paizo is doing a year long open playtest of rules that are based on 8 years of experience writing and running adventures. Pathfinder may be Paizo's House Rules, but to call them arbitrary is to abuse the English language.

Well... I really wanted to hate this system. But after I had the opportunity to play it with my group and see the pace of play, the sinergy of the differents clases roles and the easy way with wich most of my players begun to grasp the rules, I am in love with this product... Is not for everyone, is different, even controversial... And of course is not perfect. But i really like it... Give it a chance and enjoy this new era of D&D!