06.17.08
Rolling
So, Fourth Edition D&D. Our DM took us through the sample adventure at the back of the Guide, so we could all get a pretty stable frame of reference. The adventure was being played with an emphasis on combat and the battle specifics; while roleplaying wasn’t specifically disallowed, I wound up being the only one doing it, in the interests of “breaking” the system. It was only very light roleplaying anyway, but it did wind up getting everyone a little more into the game.
Anyway, the biggest difference came in the first-level combat abilities. A character at 4E level 1 is roughly as capable as a character at 3.5E level 3 or 4. It is a bit of power creep, but it’s understandable: few people wanted to play a character from the very beginning under the old regime. New characters in this setup have two or so at-will abilities regardless of class, an encounter ability, and a daily ability. It is MMOish, but if I had to place it to any one online game I’ve played, I’d say it resembles FFXI’s skill distribution; the daily skills are instant-effects that can’t be put completely to waste if they miss. Some of the longer spells from back in the day have become what are called “Rituals”, which we didn’t get to use this time, but are strictly out-of-combat techniques– though I would be willing to bet that there would have to be a way to use the effects of a recently-used ritual in combat; after all, the rules are made to be broken.
Being first-level was not dull at all. While the dungeon was kind of cookie-cutter, the group moved fairly quickly through the encounters. We didn’t have any noncombat encounters, just because the DM didn’t add any into the trip, but in four hours of gameplay we got through three fairly tough battles. I can picture seeing a character through the first ten levels or so over the course of maybe five or six sessions; since this was a one-shot, we didn’t tally up XP. When I got home Saturday night I leafed through the adventure and figured out the general idea of how we did and what we’d have been awarded– we’d be splitting maybe 3500-4000 between the six of us just for the battles and traps we’d dealt with to that point, taking us a good way towards level two. If we’d managed to finish it off, we’d definitely had all hit 2.
Simplifying the skills made the game flow a little quicker. As part of my required abuse of the system, I tried to find a way up a 10-foot wall without having to use my relatively poor Athletics rating (only a +2 bonus; I had not been trained in it). As a Rogue, I had good Dexterity, and had been trained in Acrobatics, so I used a rope hanging from the ceiling to swing my way up the wall, aiming for a baddie on the wall. I missed the bad guy, but everyone was in agreement that that was much cooler than just climbing the wall normally (the DM dropped hints that it would be easier to do so, hints I boldly ignored).
Anyway. The point is that purists decrying the death of D&D should probably spend a little bit less time screaming at people to stop having fun and start hoarding their old-edition books. 4th Edition is fun. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t “feel” like D&D, or that it changes too many of the more traditional things (remember THAC0?)– it’s fun for what it is, and while it will eventually succeed 3.5, it does not destroy it. I’m thinking this might be a good way to start up a story idea… I’d said in the Twitter line Saturday night that I was setting up a campaign, and so shall it be.
Catch you folks later this week, with thoughts on MGS4. Those… gah, I don’t know if I can put that in the LJ. I’d hide the spoilers behind a cut, but the RSS feeds dislike lj-cuts. I also want to talk, of all things, about Avatar: The Last Airbender, which has inexplicably captured my attention and subsequently throttled it. That’s very likely to be done on this side, and probably later in the week. See you then.