Mari Ness - Playtesting thoughts on D&D 4.0

Negatives:

1. Let's go back. Years back. A geeky high school kid is leaning forward to a group of confused and excited preteens in their first ever roleplaying game, telling them that they've just – whoops – fallen into a room of moving skeletons.

"SKELETONS!''

"OH THIS IS SO COOL!"

"Can they kill us?"

"Do they fall apart if we hit them? Do we just hit them?"

[I will note, for the record, that none of us had a clue of what we were doing, which is precisely why this campaign gives me such a warm feeling of nostalgia.]

The geeky high school kid leans forward to me. "A feeling washes over you. A feeling that if you could just remember the right hand gestures, just remember what you are doing, you can save them. Save the whole group."

Me, squeaking: "REALLY?"

"You can make them run away….."

"NO LET'S SMASH THEM!"

"You could be the hero….."

That sealed it. I would be the hero. And I was. For the first time ever.

(and then everybody yelled at me because they wanted to see what would happen if you hit skeletons, but heroes can't have everything.)

***********

What that story in mind –

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO TURNING UNDEAD?

Dudes. Dudes. Dudes. This went all the way back to basic edition, my friends. Remember? That little red box that our parents just didn't get with all the funny little dice? And what have you done with this? Ooooh. You can now push undead three squares away?

You have got to be kidding me.

What happened to all of my fancy tables (or, in 3.5, hit dice, whatever) letting me know that as a weak little 1st level cleric, sure, I can try to push back against skeletons but when a ghost shows up man I better run.

What happened to my chances of turning away the monsters of the night, of providing shelter for the weak and weary and helpless shaking at the sounds of ghosts and bumps in the night? (My fellow Ravenloft players would not recognize me in that last sentence, but that's a Ravenloft game – I have played the protective cleric before.)

This was the coolest thing ever about playing a cleric, and no, giving clerics combat oriented spells does not help. Bring it the hell back.

2. Three pages of corrections for the first edition Player's Handbook ten days after release. Not so cool. And yes, this came up in the middle of combat (with the Ghostly Guardian thing) and more yes, we had to head to the forums and frequently asked questions sections for some rule explanation. Not so cool. On a related note, I was mildly amused to note the difference between the good old days of the 80s, where either the DM would just say, "THAT'S HOW IT WORKS DUMBASS" or we'd just all sit around and yell, and now, when everybody can pop open a laptop and google away.

3. Speaking of cleric encounters…the wizard in our party was annoyed to find that yet again, wizard spells hit everyone, friend and foe alike, while my shining ghostly guardian thing that caused us so many rule problems just hit friends.

3. 'Member back in those Basic days, when Elves were like the THE most powerful race, like, ever, cause they could both use a sword and shoot off those magic missile things and nobody else could and like the only thing holding them back was that they had to get a LOT more XP to level up than anyone else did? Yeah, that. Anyway. Enough nostalgia. Couple negatives on races: 1. 4th ed has gone back to the "Elves=Legolas" thing, partly because the "Grey Elves" concept has been moved over to "Eladrin". And 2 – this will sound odd, but –

The races are almost too balanced now.

It took me awhile to figure out just what was nagging me about it, and then I realized – in the fantasy and myths that D&D pulls from the various fantastical races aren't balanced. They aren't equal, and making them this balanced and equal takes away some of that fantasy element.

4. Ranger – One of the problems in reading through the book is that I didn't have a solid feel for the difference between a fighter and a ranger – oh, sure, some of the various powers were a bit different, but that was about it, and after one game session of play with a wizard, paladin, fighter and ranger, I still didn't have a solid feel for the difference between a fighter and a ranger. I get that all of the focus on nature and tracking and cute little furry companions bored the hell out of people before, but right at the moment, I don't see a roleplaying, character reason to play a ranger, and that's sad.

5. Speaking of which, yes, yes, I get that the Warlock is supposed to replace the Bard, but here's the thing – Bards could do a lot of things other than just stir up companions in battle, and they could be incredibly fun to RP, what with singing, rhyming, stealing people's underwear, getting dimwitted fighters to believe that a conspiracy of cats was responsible for the underwear thefts…I digress again. Bards were fun. Warlocks? Dull, and plus, needing to run around and stand next to fellow players in combat? Not fun.

6. Equipment list. This was inexplicably Made of Fail. While putting together two characters (the cleric and a backup rogue in case the cleric didn't work out) I kept coming across all kinds of items that I wanted to purchase, and couldn't. Like, not selecting something at random, boots. Normal clothing – you can buy fine clothing easily enough, but not normal stuff, which is a problem if your clothes just got burnt off by a dragon and you urgently need a plain tunic. (Almost all D&D worlds are shockingly undersupplied by Targets.) A mirror. I realize that some of the old equipment lists got a bit too lengthy, but this went the other way. On a very related note: weapons. Far too many weapons have a "why should I buy this" factor, given that they do the identical damage/range as a cheaper, lighter weapon.

Positives:

1. Major kudos for finally putting all of the cleric spells (or, as they're called now, At Will, Daily, blah, blah) under the "Cleric" class listing, the Wizard spells under the "Wizard" class listing, and so on. YAY. This was absolutely the best organized Player's Handbook ever, which is tremendously helpful when you are trying to look things up in the middle of combat.

2. Art. Very nice throughout the book, and a real plus.

3. Combat. I'm surprised to find myself listing this as a plus, since for the most part, I'm not much for combat. That's an understatement. In LARPS I often walked away from combat even if my character might want to join in. But I have to say, 4th edition has done a nice job with making combat a lot more fun than usual – it has an almost board game feel to it in some ways, if you're into board games (which I am) and a definite video game feel to it, with a setup designed for strategy and thinking and fun stuff. Admittedly I could see a vicious sort of DM taking advantage of this…

4. Dragonborn are cool. It's like the next best thing to playing a dragon.

5. Finally, we don't all have to stand around and shield the first level wizard on the hopes she might be useful later….

Mixed:

1. This was the single most effective cleric I've ever had in a combat situation – partly because I've never bothered to create combat focused, battle ready clerics before since combat never held a major interest for me, and mostly because clerics previously had almost no useful combat spells. I have to admit that getting to be involved and effective in combat, as a cleric, was thrilling.

But the counter to this is major – the cleric spells this time around focus on combat, so that all of the other cool things clerics could do, in roleplay seem lessened. Which means that my intended concept, a rather scholarly sort of cleric who was going to be a little out of her head once taken out of her university settings….flopped. Just flopped. I had fun, but, had to somewhat change the character concept mid session. I suspect, as I get a better feel for the game (and my new gaming group) this will change. But honestly, I don't feel that my cleric is a cleric but rather a fighter who can summon ghosts and things.

2. That combat focus in the book plays through in game as well – with even social encounters ended up, in one case, playing like a combat round, when we were attempting to gain access to an elven embassy.

3. Skills: Massive, massive improvement in selecting skills/adding skill points for new characters – this was, hands down, the easiest time I've ever had selecting/calculating skill points. Bravo. Nice streamlining of said skills too – and thank you to whoever insisted on eliminating both "Search" and "Spot" skills. I also, at first glance, loved the simplicity of just adding one point per skill per level…

….and then I took another look at those skills, and rethought that last thought.

Because, honestly, it doesn't make sense for some characters to increase skill points (or ranks, whatever) with ever skill in every level. To take the most obvious, Acrobatics – are we really expected to believe that our scholarly wizards are also learning a trapeze act along the way? Or that my generally good cleric is going to be learning a lot about Thievery? And yes, sure, a DM can just up the difficulty challenge rating to keep up ("Well, usually, stealing that book would have a skill check of 15, but since you're a freaking 15th level wizard and I have to think that you aren't good at this, I'm upping it to 30"), but that still begs the question as to why that character has that skill at all. I get the simplicity; I just wonder about the character building dynamics behind it.

And then, too, what if you wanted to play a ranger who spends her spare time carving stone? The simplicity here also makes it less flexible.

End result:

Well, I had fun -- but I don't think I'll ever lose my nostalgia for earlier versions of D&D.

Also, I miss the monk class.