D&D is back - Players handbook review/overview part one

D&D 4th edition is here, and I like it!! Here are some thoughts about the PH - I plan on doing a piece of a review/overview each day or two.

My D&D PH review Part 1:

The basic structure of the characters.

All classes have the same advancement chart – It tells you when you gain a level, and what you get: Feat, new Power, Ability score increases. Hit bonuses and defense bonuses are the same for every class - ½ your level + Ability mod. The defenses are AC and what used to be saving throws.

I like this for two reasons.

One - Simplicity. Everyone works off the same chart, and it's pretty easy to remember.

Two – Growth in the game. One of the design goals for D&D 4th was class equity (i.e. Everyone gets to do fun stuff, and everyone gets to do about the same amount of fun stuff at the same level) that works well. And it puts into place a framework for characters presented in later books to not be too powerful, the bane of the splatbook train model of publishing everywhere. Classes are very tight in focus, so introducing new stuff by changing color and flavor instead of powerlevel is good.

Some basic note –
Feats are gained every other level, and are somewhat less powerful than in 3.x
Class features (as opposed to powers) are all front loaded at 1st level. As the multiclassing system is very different (you actually don't get a level in another class) that works well. You get your class stuff at first, and everything after is powers. Skills are asigned at first level and there you go – although feats allow extra skills.
Ability score increase you get +1 to two Ability scores every 4 levels, and +1 to all of them at 11th and 21st.

Characters are in three “tiers” of ability – Heroic, Paragon and Epic. Thing Heroic, superheroic and high powered superheroic in Hero terms. Each one covers 10 levels. Paragon takes on 11-20, Epic 21-30. The advancement stops there (I already have in mind house rules to go beyond that).

I really like that, it gives a nice character story arc. And some of the Epic abilities start with phrases like “Once per day when you die....”.

Characters gain powers as they go up. For a mage this is their spells, Clerics are their prayers, Fighters get special fighting techniques ect. From someone coming from hero, this works well – the mechanics are the same (gain a power) but the Special effects of what it does is different depending on class. And it really lets rogues and fighters keep up with the mages in the “Cool things I can do” department. In general I didn't see a lot of overlap in the powers, although there were a few.

It is a simple basic structure that allows for modular plug ins (new classes) that because of the framework can allow future classes to not up-power (I know I said this, but I wanted to repeat it). I really like that.

Overall creating a character is a breeze. I made three in about an hour and a half, and that was learning how to create a charater. Once I have the system down, I could likely create a character in 10 or 15 minutes. And said character will have 2 at wills, one encounter, and one daily powers, in addition to any class features he gets. It is a lot like a character beginning with a multipower with 5 or 6 slots – you get a lot of stuff you get to do right away at first level.

Next time I'll cover classes more specifically.