Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Let me start off by saying, if you want just my opinion on 4th, skip to the next paragraph... I Started playing DnD when it was transitioning from 2nd ed. to 3rd ed. It was hard to find a gaming group willing to try 3rd. Just learning one system and not being familiar with it, i didn't understand why people were hesitant to want to play it. then 4th ed came out. I understand why people are hestant about this game. you have so much time (and money) invested into 3.5 that you don't want to invest the same time, and money into another system that is unfamiliar to you. My main concern is "when is 4.5 coming out?" 3.0 was out for what 3 years before 3.5? and then 3.5 was out for what? 5 years before they announced 4th edition. my main concern is how long are they going to wait to come out with 4.0 or say, 9th edition? 2nd ed was out for awhile, and i figured the same for 3.5. that being said if feel a little disappointed in WotC when they decided to release 4.0. it felt as though they weren't concerned with how the consumers would react, rather, they just want money. i was there for the announcement at gen-con, and talking to many people, they weren't to thrilled with this bit of news.

The system is a great system, if your group is into the Hack n' slash type of gaming. it makes the combat run faster, and fluent. I have found this out by introducing new players who are there for the battles and fights, as well as veterans. Also at higher levels, it's just like a spell caster of 3.5, so many options. which keeps combat very exiting, atleast for awhile. My only problem i have with the system as far as combat goes is PvP. very unbalanced. Now i can't have a spy in the party, or do similar things as far as plot lines go, which brings me to RPing.

it feels like it restricts some role play aspects of the game. skill checks are simplified, which is good, but i think to simplified. sure combinging some of the skills are a great idea, but acrobatics? common'. I personally think if your hack n' slash, this game is for you, if your group is more rp based, wait till 4.5 comes out.

When third edition came out I thought, "wow, they've fixed it". When fourth edition came out I thought, "wow, they've changed it". From 2nd to 3rd, saying the game had improved was more like stating a fact than an opinion. From 3rd to 4th, the opposite is true. Had it been me controlling the D&D franchise I would have made this new edition its own campaign setting, or even its own non-D&D product line. Bottom line: I don't care for it. I think its mind-numbing. However, if you like tactical board-games then you're going to like this edition. As for me...I'm going to get rid of these new books and go back to the 3.5 stuff.

The 4th edition of D&D isn't the game you've been waiting for--unless you've been waiting for a compromise between earlier D&D and the eighties arcade game GAUNTLET. 4E has admirably simplified a number of mechanics that ate up too much game time in editions past, but 4E works too hard to please an audience that that wants its wish fulfillment fantasies now, and can't be bothered to wait.

Take the new edition's default treatment of magic items. The PLAYER'S HANDBOOK now contains detailed descriptions of magic items (so players can start pestering the DM with a "wish list"). When player characters find a magic item, they know what it does, regardless of their class, level, whatever--no longer do they need a wizard to Identify the magic loot to determine what it does. Only rarer stuff, like "cursed or nonstandard items" might prompt the DM to "ask for an Arcana check to determine their properties" (223). So telling a Staff of Storms from a Staff of Winter is as simple as reading the staff's implied label. However, the same character lost in the woods will still have to make Nature skill checks in order to identify edible plants.

Yet 4E turbo-charges first-level characters, giving them hit point totals and combat powers that a 3E or 3.5E character wouldn't have until 5th level or so. Weak foes like hoodlums or skeletons ("minions") will have 3 hit points, yet your first level fighter could easily have 33, and have nine 8-hit-point "healing surges" to use that day. (And if that fighter is a dragonborn, he or she can also breathe fire.) Thus a huge gulf separates even beginning player characters from "normal" people in this world.

These two features of the game betray its indebtedness not to the fantasy fiction that inspired the first two editions of D&D, but to video and computer games, where all the player has to do is choose what to stab, or which line of dialogue to click on. (4E is full of quoted cliches that players can use to "role-play" their characters: "Feel the might of Bahamut!" (24).) I could pardon Wizards of the Coast for playing to the peanut gallery if the PLAYER'S HANDBOOK were actually complete, but it leaves out the bard, druid, barbarian, and monk classes--you'll have to buy a forthcoming hardcover book for them. Despite what some defenders have said, the PLAYER'S HANDBOOK is not "everything you need to play the game"--even if you're willing to play this attention-deficit-superhero version of D&D.

I've been playing D&D now for over 30 years now, grew-up in a time before the internet and video games, when you pretty much used a pen, some paper and your imagination to have fun. Well I was sad to see TSR go(the end of an era), I had hoped that Wizards Of The Coast would keep producing products along the same lines that TSR did, and for awhile it seemed like it, but then Hasbro swooped in and bought the company. Hasbro of course wanting to make $$ decided to total change the game, that way forcing players to go out and buy all new books, there first attempt 3.0 which didn't last that long. Then 3.5 and now 4.0. "video games on paper" their way of trying to get the kids to buy. Give it two or three years and there will be a 4.5 edition.
Good going Hasbro! You took a game that generations grew up playing and TOTALLY SCREWED IT UP!!!

I am currently playing in a 4th edition game. This book is a boring read in comparison to older edition works. At least 50% of this volume is comprised of "powers" for the classes. Heavy emphasis on streamlining every single class to operate like the next one. While combat runs pretty slick the character of the game leaves me uninspired.