REVIEW: D&D 4TH EDITION

I started to play Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition just about one month. With a long time experience with the system (I’ve being playing for more than 20 years), but with disposition for the new and open-minded, I tried to evaluate without any prejudice.

Here is my review.  

Pros:

• Class balance. Now every class has a role and can pack a punch (and survive) in combat.
• Some fresh air. With a “reset” in the system, you can just try something new. Different could be good. 
• Beautiful art, nice books. Sometimes you buy because how it looks. That’s the case.
• Improved mechanics. The tests and progression have been perfected, I have to admit it. And the combat system is ready (if not made) for adaptation to electronic games.

Cons:

• Hack & Slash. Simply throws the role-play to the trash can. It’s all about combat, damage and positioning. In other words: back to the D&D 1st edition. I wish the authors have played less Diablo and more pen-and-paper RPGs (if they ever played).
• Feats totally unbalanced. Some feats are very good, others are useless. In the end, all characters will have the same.
• Classic classes forgotten. What happened with the Barbarian, the Bard, the Druid, the Monk and the Sorcerer? Maybe they will appear in an “expansion”…
• Poor Wizards! Their spellbook was reduced to a few ugly powers...
• Multiclass: forget it. In real life you can change professions. In D&D 4th Edition, if you choose a class, your character will have no choice of actually learning something different. It’s the easier design choice (for a narrow minded people), but a bad one.
• Ridiculous powers. The powers are very repetitive and sometimes you can’t associate them with nothing. “Steel Serpent Strike”, “Griffon’s Wrath”, “Anvil of Doom”, “Silverstep”, “Exorcism of Steel”, “Vorpal Tornado”, “Storm of Destruction”… just to mention some Warrior’s powers. Come on! Where is the creativity? Anyway, I can’t see the point of all those fancy names for dozens of powers that do basically the same thing…  
• Dragonborn, Tiefling, Eladrin? WTF? How do you suppose to role play a Dragonborn? Oh, I forgot, role playing is obsolete…

Conclusion:

You better take off the dust of your old books because this 4th Edition can’t replace them. The best D&D is still the 3.5. Heritage has weight. So, Wizards of the Coast, be careful to do not kill your D&D like White Wolf killed her World of Darkness… Maybe you already did it.