Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition
Dungeons and Dragons just came out with its 4th edition last month. Has anyone taken a look at this yet? I was flipping through the Player's Handbook at Barnes and Noble the other day, and it looked radically different from 3rd edition. My impression that the differences between 3.5 and 4th edition are greater than the differences between AD&D first edition and 3.5.
Part of this may simply be because they formatted the book quite differently compared to the first three editions. For example in the past they used to put all of the spells in the back, but now they put all the wizard spells under the wizard class description, all of the cleric spells under the cleric class description, etc.... However there are still look like a lot of changes.
There are only eight classes now. They took out Barbarian, Druid, Monk, Sorcerer, and Bard and added Warlock and Warlord (which is closer to cleric than fighter, in spite of the name). Hit points are fixed per level now instead of rolled. Every classed gets so many "healing charges" per day, so they have some ability to heal themselves. Gnome and Half-Orc races were deleted, while Dragonkin and Tiefling races were added.
All classes have powers now. For example even the fighter gets several powers at first level and then requires more regularly. Abilities are defined as either "at will", "once per encounter", or "once per day". "At will" powers tend to be minor, "once per encounter" are moderately powered, and "once per day" powers tend to be your most powerful abilities. Like for a fighter, an "at will" power might give a +2 to hit, a "once per encounter" ability might do an extra die of damage, and a "once per day" ability might do an extra die of damage and give the foe a penalty for the rest of the combat.
Wizard spells and spellbooks look pretty different. Spells are basically just like the powers that everyone else gets, and I think you only get them when you go up a level. I'll have to check again, but I don't think you acquire new spells by capturing spellbooks. Instead I think the Wizard gets twice the powers of the other classes and then picks which half he'll use that day. That is how he picks his spells. Other than that spells work just like powers I described above. Like Magic Missle can be used at will, while Fireball is once per day.
Overall it looks like a very different system that what I am used to with D&D. I wouldn't mind trying it since I like trying new things, and while it might be very fun I'm not sure how much it will "feel" like D&D. Anyone else have some opinions or additional info they'd like to share about this?
