4E Primer

As I’ve been reporting on the Dungeons and Dragons updated and Fourth Edition Progress, I thought I’d report this – as I haven’t checked in on the DnD Insider webpages in a while, I’m glad that one of my friends found this. As of two days ago, Wizards has released a primer to show some how some of the rules have been streamlined. I’ve been reporting all this stuff since the beginning, but just so you know that I haven’t been blowing hot air, enjoy!

4E Primer

Things I’m excited about:

They are making a huge effort to cut down on annoying rules such as the grapple attack – see “A trio of C rules”.

Combat rolls are becoming much simpler, thank goodness – see “static defense”, “saving throws”.

They are keeping and refining the Action Point system!! Every player’s heart leaps for joy!

NO KEEPING TRACKING OF EXTENDED DURATIONS! YES! No more saying “Tick off another round”

I also really like the idea of changing the reach rules, so that reach is only active on the attacker’s turn; makes sense.

Things I’m unsure of:

Clearly defined character roles. If you’ve been reading my last blog entry, then you’ll have noticed the second DM discussion I was having with a friend, found here. This was on a similar topic to a post from last year, which you can check out the discussion here – most of this was merely speculation as not a whole lot had come out on 4E. I think the biggest worry is that character classes will become TOO clearly defined, but we’ll have to see.

Movement being standardized in squares, when we don’t use miniatures and square maps. Although, we have commented on several occasions “This would be easier if we used the squares on Matt’s maps.” Maybe we should do a combination – people like the visuals.

Healing bursts seem overpowered and out of control, but the idea seems intriguing and I’d like to see how it goes.

My conclusions:

The good of 4th edition far outways anything that might or might not be bad. I’m looking forward to playing and I already have my campaign partially prepared. Go Bill!