I'm an old-time D&D player, back to the OD&D brown book rules of the 1970's. I'm one of those who moved from edition to editon kicking and screaming, because I like my old rules and the simplicity that they represent.
When 4E came out, I was one of the first in line to buy the rules because I had heard that they were rolling back the clock and making the game more like the old days. Upon reading the rules, however, I was surprised at the complexity of the new edition. I promptly shelved my 4E books (I bought about a dozen books) and didn't use them.
I read through the "For Dummies" book. I even tried something similar to the "essentials" products by taking the Player's Handbook PDF and doing a copy-paste to create a simplified rules doc with just fighter, cleric, magic-user, thief. The way I play the old rules sets. I never completed the project, as I found that just levels 1-10 for each class had so many powers that each was around 10 pages in a Word doc. Not too simple. My next step was to buy packs of Power Cards. Again, I decided to focus on the "big four" classes to give myself an Old School feel. And hopefully to keep it simple. I still shelved the rules because there were just too many details to juggle.
Finally, my teenaged son bugged me about wanting to play 4E long enough that I agreed to give them a shot. I finally ran a 4E campaign and loved it. In order to do so, I had to look outside of my OD&D box in a few key ways:
1. 4E is a game of exceptions. I realized that I didn't have to know all of the rules, as long as my players knew their own character.
2. The Character Builder software was a life saver. It kept track of the details for me, printed out the power cards I needed, made character building reasonable.
3. I told my players that the 4E campaign was a trial run, that I would make some decisions as to how long-term the game would run after we had played for a while. After all, the Character Builder was only free for characters of level 1-3. After that I would have to buy a subscription. If we liked the game enough the price would be worth it, but if we were only so-so about the game I wouldn't pursue the added cost.
I was going to suggest to WotC that they include a free Character Builder CD with each Red Box "essentials" set and with each Player's Handbook. This would be a huge benefit for any entry-level players of this edition.
However, while I'm still trying to make up my mind on this, I keep reading these threads about how much people don't like the new format of the Character Builder. For me, the Character Builder was what "sealed the deal" and got me to give 4E a serious look. I'm not entirely certain as to why the Character Builder has changed format so much, but I'm not liking what I'm hearing and I don't know if I will continue to follow the 4E path. I know that mine is but one vote, and the company has a "big picture" in mind that is larger than any issues I might have with a game, but this move isn't encouraging me to give 4E much of a look beyond what I've done already.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the whole thing.
And that might again cause them loses.
If I had not encountered the demo, I doubt I'd have used it at all.
Without being convinced of how useful the CB is, I dare say my game would likely be less doable, and I would even not be unwilling to say I might have walked on running 4th by now. Or at the very least, unwilling to buy anything I can't realistically carry to the game.
I only grabbed the pdf files to employ at a game the CB made realistically viable.
No CB might have meant nothing other than the 3 core books being desired.
I sometimes think Wizards just doesn't see a lot of the trickle down repercussions of their choices.
I recently translated my entire charater from an ink printed CB to a blank charater sheet in pencil so I could adjust much more easily as I leveled. While my friends all reprinted their lvl 15 charaters, I swapped a Daily and updated my hitpoints and finished in 5 minutes.
To the OP: Having played since the days of THACO, shifting the the new system was interesting, but ended up being far more streamlined. If you allow your charaters to exploit every option ever created, you run into RIFTS syndrom far to often imo. The old (and new) CBs offer far more choices then are humanly nessary and lend themselves to min max. Generally it is my opinion that the tangible books are manditory for a player and that most if not all skills and abilities should come from them and be referenced at the table top itself.
Dont get me wrong, I loved the orginal CB and have high hopes for the new one, but I tend to consider the resources I will have while playing at 12:30 on a Sunday night in a garage when I make/run games.
But I am a DM, I use it for insta NPCs. I don't have the time or energy to put the effort into a guy I might not need next session.
I do tell everyone to take the CB, make their PC and then immediately transcribe page 1 and 2 to a black record sheet, because it DOES change all the time.
The powers and gear pages are worth a print out normally. The wise player prints and cuts into power cards, although leaving as pages is cool too.
But players should know the process BEFORE using the CB for the most part. I've told players before, auto build their PC, and then prove to themselves that they can actually do a better job by looking at the auto built PC. The auto builds usually catch things the player might not notice.
Ok here’s my story I’ll try and keep it short….
I’m in the bookstore the other day with my 14-year-old son who like me is a big fan of RPG’s he just strictly plays his on his PC.
So there I am and I glance up and what do I see “The Red BOX” and I think NO way it can’t be, as you can probably tell by now I’ve been out of the D&D loop since 2nd addition.
(BTW…Great marketing plan WOTC)
So with a bit of reading I realize it’s a re-launch of the old Red Box to introduce the new 4th edition rule set to new players and I think humm this is a good place for me to start and get back into things considering I haven’t DM’ed a game since we had THACO.
So I pick it up along with the new Players hand book, but I quickly become frustrated once I get it home and here’s why.
The Red Box starts you off in a good place with a single player adventure that seems to start to walk you through the character creation process and at the same time helps you understand what all these statistics are used for but falls woefully short.
The biggest part of understanding this game is the character creation process, if you can understand what statistic get modified and why you’re well on your way to understanding the game.
Unfortunately the Red Box often tells you to modify a stat but doesn’t go into making it clear why. So I thought ..ha!… no problem I expected that,…that’s why I picked up the players hand book, I’ll find my answer there …. This only served to confuse the situation even more as now I found a number of discrepancies between the two…..WTF.
If an ex-DM from 2nd edition AD&D is having this much difficulty in self-teaching himself to just role up a character this product has failed.
WOTC here is a tip for your next Players Hand book, include a full tutorial on character creation in your next edition (this should be the first chapter) something like this “ok now we are going to create a Dragonborn Fighter First go to page 17 we need to chose a method to create our ability scores for this tutorial we are going to use the Standard Array. For fighter’s their primary statists are …etc….etc, turn to page 34 in the PHB note Dragonborn get a plus 2 to Strength and Charisma record these modifiers now to see sample character sheet on page 30 ….etc….etc.
I think you guys get to close to the game and really miss the boat when it comes to conveying what the immediate information the player needs to get playing is … you’ve made playing the game easy but made character generating like filing a Tax return with the information spread across a 317 page booklet….LOL
Ok here’s my story I’ll try and keep it short….
I’m in the bookstore the other day with my 14-year-old son who like me is a big fan of RPG’s he just strictly plays his on his PC.
So there I am and I glance up and what do I see “The Red BOX” and I think NO way it can’t be, as you can probably tell by now I’ve been out of the D&D loop since 2nd addition.
(BTW…Great marketing plan WOTC)
So with a bit of reading I realize it’s a re-launch of the old Red Box to introduce the new 4th edition rule set to new players and I think humm this is a good place for me to start and get back into things considering I haven’t DM’ed a game since we had THACO.
So I pick it up along with the new Players hand book, but I quickly become frustrated once I get it home and here’s why.
The Red Box starts you off in a good place with a single player adventure that seems to start to walk you through the character creation process and at the same time helps you understand what all these statistics are used for but falls woefully short.
The biggest part of understanding this game is the character creation process, if you can understand what statistic get modified and why you’re well on your way to understanding the game.
Unfortunately the Red Box often tells you to modify a stat but doesn’t go into making it clear why. So I thought ..ha!… no problem I expected that,…that’s why I picked up the players hand book, I’ll find my answer there …. This only served to confuse the situation even more as now I found a number of discrepancies between the two…..WTF.
If an ex-DM from 2nd edition AD&D is having this much difficulty in self-teaching himself to just role up a character this product has failed.
WOTC here is a tip for your next Players Hand book, include a full tutorial on character creation in your next edition (this should be the first chapter) something like this “ok now we are going to create a Dragonborn Fighter First go to page 17 we need to chose a method to create our ability scores for this tutorial we are going to use the Standard Array. For fighter’s their primary statists are …etc….etc, turn to page 34 in the PHB note Dragonborn get a plus 2 to Strength and Charisma record these modifiers now to see sample character sheet on page 30 ….etc….etc.
I think you guys get to close to the game and really miss the boat when it comes to conveying what the immediate information the player needs to get playing is … you’ve made playing the game easy but made character generating like filing a Tax return with the information spread across a 317 page booklet….LOL
Wait til you get to the 100+ pages of errata and using all the other books...
I hate to be the berror of bad news Logun24x7; but with the Essential rules in place the origional PHB1, is outdated. Shame too, as I prefer it.
You see WotC had a tendancy to reform the entire ruleset every 2.5 years. The red box is actually a starter set for 4.5 rules. Which are compatable, but at the same time buile along diferent lines.
www.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/u... This is the link to the errata page. Note there was errata released this month, but I cannot find the link at the moment, and it's not on the page I linked.
Welcome back to the game.
Thanks TD,
I had a look through the errata PDF’s and I don’t think this is a case, there are some real strange things in the Red Box that just don’t make sense for either 4e PHB1-2 or 3.
As an example they want you to add a +4 to your attack modifier for using a Greatsword and that had me baffled until I realized it was for the Fighter’s weapon proficiency but it should only be +3. In this segment of the Red Box’s player hand book it’s suppose to be teaching you about rolling a character but knowing a little bit about the game I was going over the rules for hours trying to figure out how they were getting the fighters attack bonus up to +8 when I was only seeing +7
Then in another section it tells you to add your strength and constitution modifiers to your attack roll….and that one had me stumped as well.
I think these are just errors but sad that some of them effect the basic rules of the game because it just leaves you with a confused and somewhat frustrated newbi.
So now I’m reading through the new core rules and what they really don’t do well is separate the lore and the mechanics very well. You could fit the basic rules for rolling up a PC on 2 pages but instead you have to jump back-n forth between 317 pages of ….blaa….blaa…blaa … to get a grip on it.
They really need to clean that up, I really feel like I’m filling my Tax return …. “see page 56 for your main stats ” …”now see page 236 for modifiers” …”now jump to page 36 to see class abilities” … “good now turn to page 101 to see more on defense abilities” … now add lines A1 to E4 of subsection C2 to line 201 and this is your attack modifier … well done …now lets get started with your daily abilities ….LOL
Wait til you get to the 100+ pages of errata and using all the other books...
To better illustrate your remark (123 pages of errata compiled October 2010) maybe include the titles of those books:
Adventurer's Vault
Adventurer's Vault 2
Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons
Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons
Dungeon Master's Guide
Dungeon Master's Guide 2
Dungeon Master's Screen
Demonomicon
Divine Power
Dark Sun Campaign Guide
Eberron Campaign Guide
Eberron Player's Guide
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
Forgotten Realms Player's Guide
all Dragon magazines (associated to D&D 4e)
all Dungeon magazines (associated to D&D 4e)
Monster Manual
Monster Manual 2
Monster Manual 3
Manual of the Planes
Martial Power
Martial Power 2
Open Grave
Plane Below
Power Cards
Player's Handbook
Player's Handbook 2
Player's Handbook 3
Player's Handbook Races: Dragonborn
Player's Handbook Races: Tieflings
Primal Power
Psionic Power
Tomb of Horrors
Some of the errata have less than a page of updates for the associated book.
@Finarvyn someone else on these boards provided a nice recommendation to better understand D&D 4e:
Player's Handbook
* Three Basic Rules (p 11)
* Power Types and Usage (p 54)
* Skills (p178-179)
* Feats (p 192)
* Rest and Recovery (p 263)
* All of Chapter 9 [Combat] (p 264-295)
A player needs to read the sections for building his or her character -- race, class, powers, feats, equipment, etc. But those are PC-specific. The above list is for everyone, regardless of the race or class or build or concept they are playing.
It will be interesting with the Essentials rollout and 4.5 vs 4.0 to see how long the 4.0 is supported.
They really need to clean that up, I really feel like I’m filling my Tax return …. “see page 56 for your main stats ” …”now see page 236 for modifiers” …”now jump to page 36 to see class abilities” … “good now turn to page 101 to see more on defense abilities” … now add lines A1 to E4 of subsection C2 to line 201 and this is your attack modifier … well done …now lets get started with your daily abilities ….LOLThe poster above me had a very good point about which pages to read.
I may not have gotten my point across before. WotC fired its 4.0 design staff the beginning of the year, and hired a new team going forward. Team 2 is headed by a guy who hated the rules put out in PHB1, and decided to go in a completely new direction with the way classes are made.The red box is the first product for the “essentials” line; in which the type of fighter created in the play thru is called a slayer. The slayer class has no daily powers, is a striker not a defender, and adds his CON mod to his damage as well as his STR.
As I said before I prefer the PHB1 rules to the new & depraved rules, and they work just fine.
Thanks again TD … I’m so glad there’s a great community here to get your questions answered, but wow adding “con” to a damage roll just sounded so foreign, I thought it had to be a mistake …. What book will I find that rule in? … I’m so confused.
Thank you again!!!!!
They really need to clean that up, I really feel like I’m filling my Tax return …. “see page 56 for your main stats ” …”now see page 236 for modifiers” …”now jump to page 36 to see class abilities” … “good now turn to page 101 to see more on defense abilities” … now add lines A1 to E4 of subsection C2 to line 201 and this is your attack modifier … well done …now lets get started with your daily abilities ….LOLThe poster above me had a very good point about which pages to read.
I may not have gotten my point across before. WotC fired its 4.0 design staff the beginning of the year, and hired a new team going forward. Team 2 is headed by a guy who hated the rules put out in PHB1, and decided to go in a completely new direction with the way classes are made.The red box is the first product for the “essentials” line; in which the type of fighter created in the play thru is called a slayer. The slayer class has no daily powers, is a striker not a defender, and adds his CON mod to his damage as well as his STR.
As I said before I prefer the PHB1 rules to the new & depraved rules, and they work just fine.
Thanks again TD … I’m so glad there’s a great community here to get your questions answered, but wow adding “con” to a damage roll just sounded so foreign, I thought it had to be a mistake …. What book will I find that rule in? … I’m so confused.
Thank you again!!!!!
Sounds like what the sorcerer got. A cosmic sorcerer adds their Str mod to their damage roll, go figure...
"I'm throwing this ball of energy at you really hard!"
I hate to say that 4E is "harder" and certainly the issues I'm having are similar to the same issues I had every time I switched from one edition to the next. In part, that's why I like my older editions best becasue they fit my comfort level better.
As to using paper-and-pencil for character sheets that's the only way I ever did it prior to 3E, and still the way I do it most of the time. It's just that as the level of character detail has increased, so has the need for character building support so that I don't forget to add all of the appropriate bonuses, etc.
Having said all that, I'm enjoying 4E but it's very different from the style I'm most used to playing.
i did not like the 4e out of the gate, but I am lovin me some essentials.
i don't do edition wars, and honestly, all that has really changed is how the background crunhc works. my descriptions and stories have not changed, and we are now going on 17 years of running our same homebrew world (which started with the old blue expert set! booyah!)
glad to see more grogs returning!
One of the largest issues I can see going forward with CB, online or otherwise, is edition support.
It will be interesting with the Essentials rollout and 4.5 vs 4.0 to see how long the 4.0 is supported.
There is no 4.5, this isn't the reboot your looking for. Essentials is an addition to the current edition, not a replacement. Move along.... move along...
4.0 is a great edition and WoTC is going to continue to support it.
The Essentials line is Roleplaying light, designed to grab newer (and imo MMO type) players.
It should not impact 4.0 negatively. More over, it provides rich source matieral to steal for 4.0 classes if you have a flexible DM.
3.0 and 3.5 was not even that major a rule overhaul. I used my 3.0 books in various 3.5 games until 4 came out without issue. I just knew the major errata.
My concern was making the distinction between the simpler rules/classes in Essentials and the more challenging version that is 4.0..... although more challenging is a bit of an overstatement..... in the online charater builder.
People like clean and easy to use flows.
IMO they should not even be under the same builder, but a Gem Button at the beginning that says "4.0" or "Essentials".
Umm ... Essentials is '4.0'. They're meant to work together.
No it's not, you stupid sheeple! WotC is just lieing and you're just drinking the kool-aid! Good thing that I'M super-special and know the TRUTH, otherwise how would we get the word out?!?!?!?!
No it's not, you stupid sheeple! WotC is just lieing and you're just drinking the kool-aid! Good thing that I'M super-special and know the TRUTH, otherwise how would we get the word out?!?!?!?!
Wha ... what just happened? It's ... it's like this ... fog has been lifted from my brain or something. Like the wool (get it? sheeple, wool?
) has finally been removed from my eyes! Thank you, kind sir, for freeing me from the nefarious control of WotC! I have no problem with essentials until..."
Hooray for metathesiophobia! Can't hate Wizards for what it's done? No worries. Now you can hate Wizards for what it might do!
Shouldn't you be saying: "What WotC will never do?"
Unless you have the ability to peer into the future, I don't think anybody can accurately write such a sentence.