Monday 7 July 2014

Dungeons & Dragons: The New Edition

The big news in gaming this week was the release of the the new Starter Set for probably the most well known of all RPG systems. Some view the 4th edition (released in 2008) as a mis-step and a massive step backward from 3/3.5, I don't but that's for later. What was interesting was the way that the system was play tested, Wizards would issue a packet, we would play it and then send them our thoughts. All of that has led to this, with a Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide all forthcoming in a series of staggered releases.

In addition to the new releases, they have also published the basic rules as a free to download PDF you can use to take a character from level 1 to 20.

But what about the game itself, what have they fixed and what have they broken?

At its base and from what I've read I do think they have fixed the fundamental problems with the fourth edition (4e) but have taken out some of the components that made that system so much fun to play.

 

For me, the biggest problem with 4e was character progression and how the character abilities advanced. I'm still really surprised this wasn't flagged during playtesting but go above level 10 and there just becomes too many options for a character in combat. One complaint I heard about 4e was that you played your character sheet and not your character and I think this was one of the prime faults. At higher levels you had too many choices as you tried to string ever more spectacular combinations together. I'll miss the powers system in that it gave a wonderful flavour text rather than just "I hit the Orc with my sword".

I like order in my RPG's, the combat system was geared around minis, almost becoming a wargame at that stage which is probably why people didn't like it but it cleared any ambiguity when it came to when a characters were in range, on difficult terrain, in cover, etc. Even back when I was playing 2nd edition, we would often draw the combat out to help visualise the battle, I always felt this added to the game rather than detracted and was very happy when I saw 4e also embrace this kind of gameplay. 5e does away with it and is replaced by a more generic "distance" rule, that initially doesn't even seem as cohesive as the one seen in "Edge of the Empire" for example.

Vancian Magic, or the need for Wizards/Magic-Users to prepare or "Memorise" spells has been a bugbear of mine since 2e, I believe it was there in the beginning but I'm not sure. It adds an extra level of complexity on a character that is arguably one of the harder to play anyway. Clerics don't have to do this for their "spells" so why are Wizards so penalised. One of the things I loved about 4e was the balance it gave characters, everyone had a similar number of "powers" available to them, it was an equality I hadn't seen before. So e characters would inevitably be better at some things but I think the rule of "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" was at last broken.

These aren't my only issues with 5e but my main ones, 4e had its issues but it was such a radical departure from what had gone before, it was possibly doomed before it began which is a massive shame as there are so manyo good elements.

Ultimately, looking back, 4e was an attempt to balance the system between all classes, and whilst I feel they were successful in that, the problems with character advancement in relation to combat got in the way. I haven't played 5e much since the early play tests but I am hoping too and I will play a Wizard to see how it works now.