[Spectral Knight]

From the Review:

Humans: As they have always been, humans are versatile. Some of our playtest groups have argued that they are the strongest race of all, gaining an extra feat and at-will power - but given that there are no attribute penalties, other races when built with their ideal classes, will always outshine the human equivalent. When it comes down to it - +1 to various traits will beat having an extra power. Humans are still a very solid race to go for as they can take any class without having to stress so much about attribute spread to allow that class to be a viable decision - but they are not necessarily the most powerful race.

A Human character also gets an extra trained skill, a significant bonus in a game where there's no way to gain more skills without using feats. They also get an extra +1 to Will, Fortitude, and Reflex defenses. It's not fancy, but it's useful.

Fighter: Solid and dependable defenders, Fighters have a good mix of attacks, self-healing and defence. While they are still kind of the least interesting classes compared to the flashy other choices - they have a variety of fun tricks and even some clever non-combat exploits, that leads them to be a class that is well worth playing if you want something a little simpler to play, but with a variety of options to choose from.

Fighters are more powerful than ever, and dangerous to ignore in melee. Enemies shifting away from anyone but a Fighter are safe: Fighters can now attack a marked enemy who tries to attack someone else or move away from the Fighter. This makes Fighters handy to have around, especially for pinning enemies in place or keeping them busy. About the only flaw I can see in a Fighter is that they still work strictly from the ideal of Strength (+Proficiency) vs. AC, which robs them of any ability to work around heavy armor. If you want to play a fencer, you're better off going with a Rogue.

Combat in Fourth Edition is streamlined compared to previous versions. It has the conceit that players will be using miniatures and a battle grid to keep track of the action, but does claim that you can play without these.

You can, but it's a lot harder. Nothing brings a session to a screeching halt faster than an argument over position. I've heard it bandied about more than once that the game's secondary intent was to boost sales of D&D minis (which, if you know anything about WotC's past, makes some sense).

On the good side of combat, many monsters have definite strengths and weaknesses. The power system for PCs is designed to take advantage of this. Rogues have a few tricks for dealing with High-AC/Low-Reflex monsters, and Magic-Users for Low-Will monsters. Teamwork is essential (and possible) to a degree rarely seen in previous editions, so long as players can tell what isn't working and shift their tactics.

Example: Facing a crazed warrior in a recent encounter, my Warlock led with a Dreadful Word, which attacks Will and lowers it if it hits. This guy's AC was dynamite, but his mind was a wide-open door. Had the group's ranger not shredded the insane fighter next round, I would've followed it up with Dread Star (which also attacks Will), to try and whittle down this goon's enormous stock of HP. As it was, the Ranger got a couple of lucky rolls (both To-Hit and damage) or he wouldn't have been nearly so effective.

But then again, isn't it said that good dice rolls beat good tactics any day? I know I've heard it noised about, especially in D&D games.

However, there can be cases particularly in the early heroic stage where players spend all their nifty powers and then spend the remaining rounds whittling away at the enemy with the same combinations of attacks. This may change with future feats and powers - but for now, it is possible for fights to start off amazingly dynamic and fun but end with the final opponent dying from a death of a thousand cuts.

'The Fight Grind' is what I used to call it in earlier editions. Granted, having abilities that can be used up is better than having useless abilities (like Disarm and Trip, where the enemy just spends a move action to either retrieve their weapon or get up, and just keeps hitting you), and these do more damage, which can shorten a fight considerably. But against a monster that's a brick wall of HP that has to be whittled down, and has few weak spots, it can turn into a frustrating grind quickly. But with good use of abilities, it doesn't have to be a very long grind. It's a definite improvement over 'I attack.' 'I attack again.' 'I attack again...'

One place you can run into trouble is with combat involving above-level monsters. Since defense is based heavily on level now, encounters can go from exciting to frustrating in a hurry. This is especially true once The Fight Grind sets in. I was in a recent game that involved a battle against a young Black Dragon. Good use of abilities enabled the group (level 1 and 2 characters) to take this dragon down fast and hard (in 3 rounds!), but it could've turned into a deadly grind very easily (even low-level dragons have a lot of useful powers for killing adventurers) if the dice hadn't gone our way, and the dragon hadn't been so arrogant that it refrained from using some of its more devastating abilities.

The DMG covers skill challenges, which are non-combat encounters where the players and DM set a goal that needs to be achieved, and then the PCs must succeed a number of times before they rack up too many failures.

In actual play this proved to be a lot of fun and encouraged some creative roleplaying as players tried to figure out which of their strong skills could be used to help with the challenge. They do seem tough DCs, and some players found the structure lead away from immersive in character talk to the old "my character says something about how this is a good plan..." type talking.

I've seen this done before, in the old Masterbook system, only they used a card system. The turn-based format was still the same, but D&D4's system is a bit more streamlined and doesn't require anything you wouldn't bring to a D&D game table already.

If you want fluff -then you will be disappointed.

If you want much of anything aside from numbers, you'll be disappointed. Then again, this is true of most of the Monstrous/Monster Manuals, if slightly moreso in this edition.

There are some odd cases that should have been obvious problems straight out the gate. A blatant one is teleportation. The rules are not always clear on what teleporters can and can't do. Can you teleport an opponent five squares up? Is teleporting someone over a cliff acceptable?

Both of those matters with teleportation can lead to some abuse, obviously. WotC should have explained it. Earlier uses of powers from 3.X, like Summon, had a glaring rules hole in that some summonable creatures were extremely heavy. While you couldn't summon them in midair, it wasn't hard to cast Fly on them and simply drop them on whatever you wanted to hurt. You'd think a bunch of DMs writing a game would see a problem, but apparently not. Hopefully they're reading these reviews and taking notes.

D&D4e is a fun, engaging game that encourages players to work together and think beyond "I hit it."

That alone is worth trying the new edition out. Previous editions encouraged working together, but through annoyingly static 'role enforcement' methods like Cross-Class Skills (an amazingly annoying concept in practice, though less annoying than earlier edition skill systems) and Base Attack Bonus (a relic of previous D&D editions). AoOs have been streamlined to the point that they no longer slow down play mechanically (though they still slow it down just as much in decisionmaking). If nothing will get them out of the game entirely, better to have a simple system for them than the mess 3.X used. All in all, the mechanics got better, or at least better explained and thought out (a few hiccups notwithstanding), and it is definitely fun to put together a group and step into a dungeon. And I never thought I'd say that again.

Now if they only refrain from overcomplicating it like they did 3.X, it'll stay fun and engaging. My fingers are crossed for the future of the first dungeon-crawling game I've played and enjoyed (and frankly gave a damn about) in most of a decade.

Originally Posted by Tori Bergquist

I just use counters from the Fiery Dragon Counter Collection series....they have one collected set that's about $20 and gives you hundreds of counters for all sorts of stuff. And as for battle mats, you can grab one for about $10-$20 at the FLGS and get some dry erasable markers for it, or just print up some square grids and use to taste.

Good substitute, and frankly I can do without supporting WotC's collectible-money-pit-palooza. Some mini sellers, for those who can't do without the official merchandise, sell common minis super-cheap, which you'll need for getting enough to GM.

Originally Posted by Tori Bergquist

Basically....you don't actually need WotC's minis and maps...just some counters and a map, just like always, so I don't think the buy-in is all that steep.....except for the books....but then I say check Amazon for deals on those!

Amazon's having a lot of trouble keeping up with demand on this one, so be prepared to wait. But it's still very cheap compared to the book chain rates.

Originally Posted by tylermo

Totally agree about the figure flats, counters, and the inexpensive mats. For example, back in 05 or 06 a nice little product called the Flipmat (from Steelsqwire)was available for about 10.00. They're distributed through Paizo these days, and are still very affordable at 13.00. These mats are laminated, and almost any marker can be used on them. Dry and wet erase to be certain, and supposedly even permanent marker, or sharpie. These mats fold like a laminated road map, and are smaller than the 40.00 chessex megamat, so that may turn folks off. Other than occasionally needing a mega, or bigger, I pretty much swear by the flipmats. Especially, the plain one. Use it all the time for my Savage Worlds games.

Boy, does he! I've played on one at Tylermo's con games for a couple years running, and they do work beautifully for the gamer on the go. The folding matter can be rectified by weighting down the edges and spreading it as flat as possible. Fair warning: use very heavy paperweights, say about three pounds or more.

Originally Posted by JTS

Another fun one, that we did 20+ years ago, was use Legos for miniatures. We still had some in storage back then from when we were kids, and now that I've got kids of my own, we have some again. You have them anyway, and they're versatile and fit multiple genres.

JTS

I remember seeing a website about someone doing this a few years back. I think it was called 'Smiling In The Face Of Danger'. And it's not a bad idea, with the sheer variety of Lego figures available nowadays compared to then.