Who will like 4e?

I’ve played every edition of D&D. Each one offers some things to like and some things that can get on your nerves. For the next few posts I'm going to share some of the things there are to like about 4th edition. I'm going to focus of a few different types of players and explain what I think 4e offers to each. In today’s post I'm talking about the newbie.

If you are new to D&D or role-playing games, you will probably like 4e. There are five things I think make 4e a newb friendly game. First, the rules system is exception based. This means that there are only a few simple rules that one must learn to know how to play the game. In most situations these few rules will tell you what to do. However, the game achieves complexity, because all of your powers let you break these rules. So you don’t have to read the whole rule book. If you know the basic rules, and how your powers let you break those rules, you can play the game. All told this will add up to about 30 (at most) pages of the 315 page player hand book that you’ll need to familiarize yourself with. Really you can probably play with much less. The Keep on the Shadowfell game module comes with a 3 page set of quick start rules and 5 character sheets and that was more than enough for my gaming group to start playing with.

Secondly, the character roles are a great help. They let you know what your character should be doing, and they help you choose a character that will be fun for you to play. Really character roles have always been a part of D&D but in older editions they were implied from the handbooks. If you weren’t familiar with the D&D world, you learned your role the hard way – dying a lot. WotC has taken the chance with the new books to tell you explicitly the role they’ve designed a character class for. If you’re playing with experienced players they won’t be annoyed when you send your ranger into the fray in front of the fighter, because your character role tells you that you should focus on mobility and quick strikes from an advantageous position. You could still play your character against it’s role, but if you do it’s more likely that you’ll be doing it on purpose, not because you didn’t know what you were “supposed” to be doing.

The third thing that newbies will like about 4e is the relative ease of the bookkeeping. Previous editions had some enigmatic rules involving tables and cumbersome mechanics that had you counting rounds of play. Trying to keep track of everything was sometimes more work than filing your taxes. 4e has cut a lot of that down. Most effects last only one turn (a few last until the end of the encounter), so they are easy to track. And old pros will notice that there are far fewer skills on the character sheets. That’s because they’ve rolled similar skills together (for example pick locks, pick pockets, disarm traps, and slight of hand are all covered by thievery).

Another advantage to 4e if you’re new to D&D is that, right now, 4e is new for everyone. You won’t have to feel so clueless, because even the old vets will be learning the new system. Everyone will have questions. Everyone will have to look up some rules during the game. You won’t stand out as a newbie as much.

The final thing I’d like to comment on is the amount of advice the new books give to new players. There are sections on how to give your character personality and make her more three dimensional. There are little tidbits like “if you want to be otherworldly and mysterious, graceful and intelligent, able to teleport around the battlefield, or a member of a race that favors wizard, rogue or warlock classes” play an eladrin. Or “Experts trackers and scouts, rangers are wilderness warriors who excel at hit-and-run tactics. If you want to master both bow and blade, vanish into the woods like a ghost, and bring down your foes before they know you’re there, play a ranger.” The books do a very good job at helping you find ways to maximize your fun while you play.

Well those are my reasons why a newbie will have fun with 4e. Look for my upcoming posts where I’ll tell you why I think DMs, tacticians, players who like being super cool, and gaming groups who have dispersed across the country will like 4e.