Last week, I reviewed the DMG and found it to be the best version of this long-lived book. It wasn’t without flaws, chiefly among those was how the writing of Skill Challenges was doing the mechanic near-criminal injustice.
This week, I’ll tackle the 4th Edition Players Handbook, from the standpoint of its content and then its organization.
I’ll also apply something I learned from making scientific presentations, I’ll give you my conclusions up front and you can read on to see how I got there.
Chatty’s flash review of the Player’s Handbook:
The new 4e rule set deliver what the designers promised and actually achieves much more than I would have expected from an exception-based designed Core product when compared to similar designs (Collectible Card/Miniature games).
The book presents the new rules in a clear, concise and well organized manner, making it a great reference book.
While the book shines as a great set of rules and ease of reference at the gaming table, it seriously lacks in terms of walking a new player through the game and making a character. Char Gen requires constant, somewhat confusing page flipping throughout the book. That should not be seen in such a State of the Art game design.
The Player’s rules
In the book, you’ll find everything that players need to know to play D&D, including predictably Character Generation (taking most of the book), equipment, Magic Items (which is a first) and combat.
As some have noticed it’s the about Martial, Arcane and Divine Heroes. I know it’s no surprise that WotC will print more source books but this time the book actually comes out and mentions things like “in future volumes of the Player’s Handbook”.
At least they are being brutally honest about it, and let’s face it, that’s what a lot of fans want, more crunch . For instance, I have over 45 D&D 3.5 books!
The Players Handbook is the core of the crunch of D&D 4e. About 80% of the games’ rules are in there. Like D&D 3.X, giving out the combat engine and task resolution mechanics to the players makes it a shared responsibility game. I’m all right with that and after nearly a decade of D&D 3.X, I think most players are comfortable with that.
It’s been said in countless other venues, but D&D 4e is about action scenes, well defined class roles and equal opportunities for all characters to have a significant impact both inside and outside combat.
The rules are built around a few key concepts such as:
- Roll high with a d20 against target number
- A set number of actions per round
- Death and healing mechanics and so on
All these concepts can be explained in about 15 minutes and don’t need to be re-explained.
However, as simple as the game core mechanics are, the strength of D&D 4e comes out in the way each power, feat, magic Item and other sub-component interact in a synergistic way and allow players to break the core rules.
Having played Magic: The Gathering casually and competitively since it’s release, I’m very comfortable with this approach and this gave me an advantage in learning the new ruleset.
Such an approach actually makes rules argument easier to resolve and allows easier adjudication of out of the ordinary events (you just find a simple way to break the rules that maintain suspension of disbelief in your players).
For this, the Player’s Handbook, as the embodiment of the D&D 4e rules, shines like a bright star in my book. I’m actually impressed that so many things can be done with this Core game. When you buy a Core set of other exception based design games, you don’t get as much stuff… (but then again, with an average 80$ entry price, it’s to be expected).
In fact, I will go against the current opinion on the subject and say that D&D 4e was probably not designed to get the Video game/MMORPG crowd to adopt Tabletop RPGs. I actually believe that Wizards of the Coast are trying to eat market shares of the very large and lucrative collectible/non-collectible card/miniatures gamer pool.
Business analysis comments aside, the PHB is a very dense read, with the tons of powers, feats, magic items and rituals. I often found myself skimming ahead to the next chapter.
So dense is the book in fact that after a certain time, all powers and Magic Items start to feel like they are one and the same. I’ve since found out that they are boring to read but fun to play, so stage a few fake fights with your new characters.
The Players Handbook Organization.
From a DM’s perspective, I like how the PHB is organized. Having read it only once, I was able to find whatever combat rule or piece of equipment in mere seconds when I played my first few trial games.
The combat section is well laid out and the various special actions (like Bull Rush and so on) are found alphabetically. The same goes for skills, feats magic Items and so on.
A limited but useful Index is found at the end of the book and I found it to complement the table of content admirably.
I found the book to be on par to with the 3.5 D&D Compendium in terms of at-the-table usability. (Note that the 3.5 Compendium was among my favorite D&D books).
Actually, maybe that’s where the book’s greatest problems lie. In making the book more useful at the game table than on your desk it might have partly defeated it’s purpose of being a helpful reference to new players and to create characters.
I did two characters so far with it and I must say that the organization of the book does not lend itself to a seamless, linear process.
I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t mastered the book’s layout yet but creating a character leads to a series of page hunting exercises where you dive in all over the book, front and back, to get to whatever choice you have to make.
I’m sure it was sensibly the same in D&D 3.5 but it’s was bad enough that I got annoyed by it.
I mean, Gurps was published 15 years ago and had from the 1st edition, a linear approach to character generation.
What it needs to be fixed (and please don’t tell me about D&D insider, this book needs to be a stand-alone product) is at the very least a series of tables with page-referenced Powers arranged by class and by level. Like in the Monster Manual, those tables need to followed by an alphabetical Powers index.
These two additions would make it a bit easier on players making PCs and would speed up in game reference more.
I’m starting to think that D&D would have been better served (regardless of the outcry it would have generated) with a Character Generation/Equipment/Magic Item Players Handbook and a Combat/Task resolution Adventuring Handbook.
The designers said they weren’t afraid to change what needed to be changed, maybe a 4th Core Book would not have been that far fetched.
So there you have it. Great fun rules, great for referencing during a game book, somewhat hostile to new players, especially during character generation.
Y’know, I’m going to have to post my own PHB review I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks now.
Let’s just say…. it’s much less polite than yours 🙂
greywulfs last blog post..FightClub: 4e. Made for Arena Combat? Oh yes!
Looking forward to read it, partly for the entertainment values of seeing you rant!
🙂
I too was surprised about how long it took to create characters.
After my initial read, I was relieved and imagined that character generation would be much quicker than 3.5 (and therefore making the occasional character death a little bit less painful and have a shorter duration of downtime). Unfortunately, in practice the layout seemed to gum up the works significantly. On the fly, there was a lot of page flipping, and having to remember that things like Hit Points and Healing Surges were found on the Class pages, rather than in a simple unified table really irked me.
Since 4e is something we were just trying for a fun one-off, the amount of time it took to get up and running with character generation really cut into the game time.
ktreys last blog post..Mentzer Basic Set III
Good, solid review. I especially appreciate that you don’t confuse “critique” with “review.” Yes, the book has a few warts; Yes, it is a whole new game; Yes, the new game is fun!
@ktrey: I’m glad to see it wasn’t just me. It’s a shame really. I think they went for the Compendium format too fast on this edition. I think its an indicator of late changes to the product’ focus in its development.
@Ish: Thanks for the kudos. I too like the game a lot and I only wish I could play it more this summer.
I’ve been trying my hands at reviewing for some time now and I’m happy with the results so far. If I ever branch out my online writing, reviews will be part of my portefolio.
Yep their is page flipping throughout the book for your few first characters and especially the first fighter you do.
But once you start knowing the feats it really winds down to going from your class to the feat tables and the equipment one, which you can mark with tags…
As strange and sacrilegious as it’s going to sound, I’m going to say one thing about the book’s layout. It’s not something that really occurred to me until I read your review, and it may be something that only makes sense to me. However. All of the rules (combat and skills, in particular, though mostly combat) should have appeared *before* the classes. Crazy, right?
Here’s the justification: As you’ve pointed out, and as WotC is intent on telling us, 4e is an exceptions based system. The problem with putting the classes and races first is that we get all the exceptions, and none of the rules to which we’re creating exceptions. I think, especially for new players, it would be better to know what the rules are first, and that’ll put the classes into better context. For seasoned players, it doesn’t make as much of a difference, and I didn’t really notice the organization of the book so much until you pointed out utility to new players.
Another thing this would help with: Rituals should be closer to classes, not way after all the other rules. I think rituals should be in roughly the same area as skills and feats, or at least feats, depending on how the book gets reorganized in my ideal universe (Basics, Combat, Skills, Races, Classes, Feats, Rituals, Equipment, or at least something along those lines).
I agree that they need a “table of powers by class” or something along those lines. Although, I’m getting closer to a homebrew PCGen data set for 4e, so I’m not sure how much of an issue this will be to me in the long run. But that’s something from *my* efforts, and the Core books will still need it for those who don’t get to benefit from the work I put into PCGen data sets.
Actually I agree 100% with you…
There are basics but thay are squezzed right between the Char Gen overview and Ability generation.
Your proposed system makes sense and might be an improvement.
As Yan points out (and like the Qwerty keyboard, designed to slow down typing), we’ll grow used to it and move on, making our own tools or making goof use of the online compendium or the freely available equivalent.
Good points Felonius.
I definitely agree with the concerns about character generation. Not just with the flipping back and forth; there seemed to be a lot of technical definitions and explanations just glanced over or ignored. Where, where is that damned [W] defined in the book? Were it not for online FAQs, I still might not know. And that fact that you add your entire Constitution score to your starting HP rather than just the modifier could’ve used some bold print or something, it’s caused a lot of confusion among my 3.X-veteran squad. And on the same subject, do you add your Con modifier to the HP you gain when you level? It’s so weird.
Great book, just not very noob-friendly.
Kavondes last blog post..Fall From Heaven II
@Kavonde:
Some of this comes down to my complaint about about the need to have the combat section first…
Page 276, which talks about Attack Results, has a section towards the top which specifies that a [W] in the damage section is your weapon’s damage dice. It would be nice if this appeared *before* the powers that used it, but what do I know about reference materials? It actually took me two cross references to get there, but page 57 which is part of “How to read a power” refers to page 269 which is the start of the section on “attacks and defenses”, and step 5 of the “Making attack” side bar refers you to page 276 to determine what happens when you hit.
Which actually brings to mind another of my issues… There’s a lot of “Turn to Page Such-and-Such”, where page such and such is a page *after* the one your reading. That’s a no-no. If you’re explaining something *later* about something that’s being dealt with *now*, you’re probably doing it wrong. Anyway. This is a tough one, though. Do you describe what happens you hit before you describe how to hit? I don’t see what the penalty to this is… Of course, the fact that the “when you hit” is 6 or 7 pages after the part about how to hit is a bit much, especially when all the stuff that appears between these sections is stuff that could have appeared before “how to make an attack” since it’s all the stuff about area of effect and the like.
Your other complaints are actually not “noob” complaints. The average noob to D&D isn’t going to have a preconceived notion about what gets added to HP and when. That’s entirely a 3.x (or previous D&D) expectation. Honestly, I think that one of the places they’ve been *most* clear is when to use a stat, and when to use that stat’s modifier. They always specify modifier when it’s the modifier, and score when it’s the score.
And, again, for the “do you add your con modifier when you level?” is something that’s only based on your expectations. The description doesn’t *say* to add your con modifier (or con score, for that matter) when you level, therefore you don’t. A noob coming to the game wouldn’t have that confusion because they wouldn’t know that it’s ever been different.
While it felt a little flippy at first, I have to say that after a couple of characters the structure of the book feels very comfortable to me. Between the vertical labeling on the top right and the distinctive art seperating chapters, I find I can usually get where I’m going very quickly. Hell, I’m just happy that races and classes start on their own pages…
That said, I would have welcomed more of a step by step walkthrough of filling out the char sheet.
Abelfish reminds me of another complaint I have (I know, I’m racking them up here…).
The character sheet is less than stellar. The right most portion of each stat’s little section there is the “abil +1/2 level”, and then they have a little magical indicator that you’re supposed surmise means “takes the bigger of these two and apply to this ability” (I know, it’s in the book how it works, but still), and then, on top of that, it’s not the abil + 1/2 level that you’re taking (the thing closest to the defenses there), but the ability modifier. Even though you add 1/2 level to the defense score, you do that at the “base” areaa (“10 + 1/2 Level”). Why not just use the Abil + 1/2 level (which they do down in skills) in the abil section, and leave a “10” permanently emblazoned in that section?
Also, Armor Class. Armor class has a little box for “Armor/Abil”. Why aren’t these separate boxes? There are plenty of boxes… I’ve crossed out one of the two “misc” sections and made it “abil”, just because, you know, how many “misc” bonuses am I expected to have? Heck, Enhancement bonuses to AC get their own section, why don’t ability modifiers?
There’s only two spots for “Damage Worksheet” and two for “Attack”, even though, at first level, you have at least 4 attack powers (two at wills, one encounter, one daily), plus at least one weapon based “basic attack” for things like opportunity attacks.
Utility Powers need a little extra space to indicate whether they’re “at will”, “encounter”, or “daily”.
Sorry about that… Those are the big ones for me. I could probably go on all day about the character sheet… It’s a lot of why I’m giving up on it and just using PCGen… I was going to use the character sheets for my group, and then I started making some test characters and started to get more and more frustrated with the lay-out. I’m very picky about character sheets… (in case my rant didn’t already reveal that…)
@ Felonius
The reason for the “Armor/Abil” box is that only one applies. If you’re wearing cloth armor, use your Dex or Int mod. If you’re wearing heavier armor, use that armor’s inherent AC bonus.
And, yeah, I definitely agree that the space they give you for attacks is pretty ridiculous. Wizards encourages that you use something like index cards to keep track of all your powers — except that, you know, they didn’t bother to put power card templates in the PHB.
@Scypher:
Actually, you’re approximately half correct. When wearing cloth, you add your Dex or Int mod, and cloth (at least not masterwork) doesn’t provide an AC bonus. Masterwork armor, even cloth, will provide an armor bonus. You also add your Dex or Int mod when you wear any other light armor (Leather and Hide). Only Heavy armors (Chainmail, Scale, Plate) don’t allow you to add a stat modifier. All armors, including cloth, provide an armor bonus, not an enhancement bonus, when they’re masterwork.
That makes at least two armors (leather and hide) possible with a ability bonus as well, plus the masterwork versions of cloth, leather, and hide, for a total of 8 armors that provide an armor bonus, and allow a stat bonus.
Its justa question of “muscle memory,” I’d wager most of us can find anything but the most obscure rules in only a few second in our dog-eared copies of the 3.x PHB. Give yourself some time with the new book, I actually think the Compendium format is going to prove a boon in the long run.
I agree with Ish. My critic on the organization was mostly from a newbish/unlearning standpoint.
I noticed about D&D4 that character generation involves a lot of flicking back and forth. The rest of the game is very straightforward book-wise, so I’m happy to make that sacrifice.
Jonathan Drains last blog post..Weekend Link Round-Up
The fliping seems to be Stats > Race, Class > Race, Class > Feats, Feats > Class, and finally Equiment. At lteast, thats my process for creating a character. However, it has always been my experince that (after attribute modifers which are unchanged) the first thing I memorized in 3.0 and 3.5 were racial modifiers and abilities.
Given that no race has negative modiefers, all modifiers are +2, and the racial abilities are all fairly straightforward… I expect much of the flipping will go away soon enough.
This has been -without a doubt- the easiest PHB to use during play I’ve seen yet.
@Jonathan & Ish: It rules as a reference book indeed!
By the way, as far as character creation is concerned, it didn’t take very long at all for us. At our giant game day event (everyone’s first 4e character ever), nobody in the group took longer to create a level 1 character than they would have to create a level 1 3e wizard (though longer than a level 1 Fighter, perhaps). This time can only decrease with experience.
I’m not sure what is taking all that long…
I created a Tiefling Warlord and Tiefling Rogue tonight; both characters took about ten minutes. That includes stat generation, power choices, selecting equipment, and filling out the character sheets.
Warlord has become my favorite class, and I have thus memorized most of its salient points. Same for Tiefling racial mods… which I said earlier I was certain would happen eventually.
The longest part of the process was picking out gear (weighing my options for weapon of choice) and selectign my one feat (I suspect jack of All rades is going to see a lot of use from me).
The only way to gain that “muscle memory” is to play the game.
The notice of all my posts should be: Phil is a DM, not a player of that game… 🙂
That Muscle memory will take a wee bit longer for me, especially since Classed NPCs can now be faked in mere minutes with the DMG Monster creation rules.
I’ve never been able to GM exclussively, which I think gives me a valuable perspective. My group alternates weeks, currenttly I’m DMing the Pathfinder RPG (aka D&D 3.75) but we’ve just begun a 4E game (actualyl they ran it once without me, but everyone wanted a redo on their characetrs so it will offfically re-kick-off on Sunday.)
I like Pathfinder just fine, but I look with evny on my 4E books whenever I’m doing game prep. A mere solo encounter with a harpy took an hour to prep… the smote her in three (short) rounds of combat. Oi vey.
But I promised them I wouldn’t switch until this campaign was ended. So I must suffer… Really, Pathfinder is a big improvment to 3.x for the players, but it changes almost nothing for the DM.
Your link to your post about the DMG doesn’t seem to work for me. It just links to your WordPress login… 🙁
@Kenneth! My bad, I’ll go correct this now!
I’ve just got the 4e PHB and a friend has got the other books, we’re looking to start up in August sometime, and we have a question for those of you who’ve played the system:
Everyone says the combat system is fast and smooth, but it looks like there might be a lot of bookkeeping involved with tracking powers. Each character has different powers that may be activated for their turn and which may affect one or more monsters, and then there are the monsters’ powers.
Have you found this problematic?
Re: Power Bookkeeping
A lot? Maybe; not enough experience with the system yet.
Less than 3E? Definitely. You have just as many buffs/debuffs as 3E, but you don’t have to track durations any longer. They’re either:
1. Gone at the end/beginning of your next turn.
2. Gone (or changed) once you make a saving throw.
3. Active the entire encounter.
The biggest problem I’ve noticed is having the tanks keep track of their marks.
@Antiquated Tory: What a lot of people do is print out some of the Power Cards already available online, slip them in plastic Sleeves (used by Collectible Card Games) and keep track of used/unused ones with the cards.
As for Marks, I suggest using poker chips or colored beads on the Mini so marked.
(Do the same for Warlock Curses and whatever Brands the Paladins and Cleric use)
There is a program called the “Magic Set Editor” that was, I beleive, intended for CCG players to manage and edit their collections. Someone over at ENWorld.org made a ‘set’ for it which contains all the powers in the PHB. It prints these out in playign card sized boxes with the full text of the ability and boxes for you to pencil in any variable info (i.e. str modifier, to hit bonus…)
I love this program, but I don’t use them as individual cards. The program prints out 8 powers per page. I just leave the sheet sitting next to my character sheet during play. I put a penny or a poker chip on each power as I use it. However, give the ease in which the sheet can be replaced, i could just use a pen.
Combat isn’t simplier, per se, although there are far less subsystems to remember and the book is far easier to reference during play.
@Antiquated Tory: We’ve found there’s a lot less book-keeping than 3e in combat. For a start, few of the Powers have durations (they’re either intant effect, or last until the end of the encounter) so that’s a big chunk o’numbers you no longer need to track at all.
I strongly recommend using markers to show effects. We use Poker chip style chits under the figure bases so it’s easy to see who’s affected by what. Keep colour coding simple (green for Acid, Red for fire, White for cold, etc, Blue for slowed, etc) and you won’t go far wrong. For larger area effects we’ve got cardboard templates at each radius from one square to 12. As we used corrugated card, it makes a pretty good impromptu hill-slash-ziggurat too 🙂
Finally, don’t believe all you read about 4e combat being faster. A typical encounter will take about the same length of time as a 3e encounter – but because of the end to multiple attacks, plus the fact that 99% of all the needed info is right on the character sheet, the players turns will come around much more quickly, so if //feels// faster. Which, IMHO, is even better than being faster 🙂
Hope that helps!
Everything that people have said holds, but I’d like to add one thing.
Don’t worry about tracking everything.
Now, that may sound like I’ve lost my mind, but bear with me.
Require each player to be responsible for tracking effects that they introduce. If a Warlock is cursing someone, they need to keep track of that and remind the DM of it. They can do this by placing a chip/chit/bead beside the guy, as suggested, or just remembering it, whichever they prefer.
A fighter will have to keep track of who he has marked, and remind the DM that the monster is marked if the monster tries to attack someone else (at which point, if the DM had forgotten, he might change the monster’s tactics).
A wizard might set an enemy on fire. He is responsible for reminding the DM of that fire damage (and the save to end), should the DM forget.
The DM should also attempt to record and track these, but if he misses something, it’s the initiating player’s responsibility to remind him.
Similarly, the DM is responsible for tracking effects he introduces into the game. If the DM sets the Rogue on fire, the DM is responsible for reminding the rogue of that fire damage (and save to end). The rogue should write “10 fire” or something on his page, as well, but if he forgets (and no other players remind him), it falls to the DM to remind him about the effect. Same with monsters marking players.
A simple system such as this will prevent everything from falling onto the shoulders of the DM, and helps a lot.
Not sure I agree with everything said in the article but it is dead on on character generation. I can usually whip out a dozen NPCs in an hour. I spent a week of 5 hour days generating characters for my one shot adventure. the first character (6th level) took an entire day from dawn until dusk. After that I got faster but the fastest character I managed was probably 3 hours and that was a very simple class and race combo.
I also felt certain classes and races combinations wound up with less feats available. 3.5 had tons of generalized feats, but 4.0 most the feats are for a specific class or race. That left me with feat slots that I wound up using for really weak feats, because I already had all the useful feats for the character. It was disappointing and I expect they will add lots of splat books to expand the list of feats. i am just worried since they have shown themselves to rarely balance later books. (My friend’s 3rd ed level 10 AC 53 psionic in troll form with psionic regeneration is proof of that.)
I felt that character design was very much like Wow talent trees. And the lack of a nice online tool is acutely painful. Character creation could take minutes with a good tool and give you nice combat cards to use when playing. But right now the character generation tools are non-existent and I am unsure whether the license will allow us to make free tools since that would compete with the online service they are planning on offering. There WILL be free online tools, it is just a matter of whether we need to make the “data packs” of all the abilities be illegal torrent only. A generator without the ability data will not infringe and with the ability to load ability data people can enter their own abilities or download list from the net. It is just a matter of time.
Z
Fooey on the idea that 4E characters have less options than 3.x; Fooey I say!
Compare the PHB of each system, on a one for one basis; now toss every combination that was either illegal or just plain silly… Now account for the sheer number of feats that were merged into Class Features or rendered unnecessary. I’ll wait while you add up the remainder… … …
See. Same amount of options.
You can’t compare a decade of splatbooks to a single core rulebook. It just ain’t fair.
the first character (6th level) took an entire day from dawn until dusk. After that I got faster but the fastest character I managed was probably 3 hours and that was a very simple class and race combo.
Seriously?
It took the entire group I GMed for on game day less than an hour for their first character (also perusing their newly acquired books at the time), and less than 20 minutes for their second characters after the TPK.
Ok, well, like the review.
I HOPE that all the newbs trying to play D&D are being introduced byt someone a little more experienced, and so that might cut down the newb-to-book relationship problem you discussed. Most of the time, from my experience, whole new groups don’t just form, but new players are integrated then wander off.
I still find the character layout to be smoother than in old editions because there’s less going back to the book to figure out mathmatics and what’s this and that that I get at this and that level… but that’s because of the mechanics of the change.
Great job…
@Mea: Welcome on the blog and thanks for the nice feedback. This game is indeed mostly thought by more experienced gamers. That’s how I learned it…
Although having stopped late in AD&D 1e’s career, I skipped a whole edition and my gaming group taught itself D&D 3e through a tumultuous 10 month long campaign.
Without a doubt, the most important tool (for me and most folk I know) for learning any RPG is a good character sheet. WotC’s offical sheet isn’t bad, I’d give a solid B, and the PHB’s two page spread that goes over how to use the sheet (which, I believe was a technique White-Wolf pioneered) is something that ought to become law for game designers.
I’ve been playing DnD for about three years, not that long, but I play it almost religously.
We’ve always used 2,3 and 3.5 versions of the players handbook. Then I take a look at v4 and wow. I do not like it at all.
The races changes, classes gone, some added (that none of the troupe likes) and things are just different, and not in a good way. Only one out of my group of 6 doesn’t think it’s all too horrible.
I just think they added too stupid things. I like all my skills, I can fine tune my character, now it’s like, well you’re good at one skill which is like…5 skills. Psh.