The Hammer and the Dragon: June 2008

About 2 weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast released the 4^th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the role playing game that actually involved role playing. The local game store held a DND Game Day and a free RPG Day to promote the new books and I got a chance to sample some of the new rules through a short game with pre made characters. Before the actual release, I was quite skeptical about 4^th Edition, thinking it was just another unnecessary gimmick to make money for Hasbro. After playing it for a bit, I slowly came to like the new changes and even though I still believed that it was another money-making scheme, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

A bit of history about Dungeons and Dragons: It was created by the now defunct company TSR which was bought over by Wizards of the Coast in the year 2000. Before the Wizards’ acquisition, DND (as the game is commonly abbreviated to) had already undergone several revamps or editions. In 2000, Wizards decided to revamp the game once more with 3^rd Edition, quickly followed by 3.5 Edition less than 2 years later. Now in 2008, we have 4^th Edition. In the 8 years or so since 3^rd Edition was released, Wizards published hundreds of supplementary books for the game, all of which are now useless unless you want to continue playing 3^rd Edition, which I assume most people would until the price for 4^th Edition book drops.

So what does 4^th Edition offer to the game? Watching Wizards’ pre-release press session for the game on YouTube is an excellent example of a bad presentation. It is so bad, that if I were not already a DND player, I would never consider trying, let alone buying this game. Now that I have played a little of it, I can say that one major improvement that they made was to give each class its own selection of special powers that can be used at will, once per encounter or once per day. Previously, in 3^rd Edition, only magic using classes like Wizards had any form of special power. Furthermore, the ability to use certain powers repeatedly means that Wizards and Clerics are no longer able to completely run out of spells, unlike in 3^rd Edition where the party had to stop and rest whenever the Wizard was out of magic. Even the races have special racial powers that they gain when leveling up. One criticism of the game that I heard from the other players was that the new rules strictly defined the roles of classes (e.g. the Rogue is the striker; the Fighter is the defender, etc.). This strict definition of roles shapes the abilities that the classes have and limits their duty in the party to the pre-defined role.

Other changes include 2 new classes- the Warlord and the Warlock, and the removal of the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Sorcerer, and Monk. They would be included in supplements (another money making gimmick). Gnomes have been excluded from the race list and transferred to the Monster Manual and two new races- the Tiefling and the Dragonborn have been added. There are also plenty of other technical changes to game play mechanics such as new rules for Grappling, Saving Throws, and the like.

So will I buy 4^th Edition? Maybe, if it’s less than 60 Dollars.