Sneak peeks at 4E

Filed under D&D 4E Preview on December 14, 2007
Keywords: 4E, Dungeons and Dragons

I’ve been following the Design & Development column of the new, online Dragon magazine (warning: you must have a D&D Insider account–currently free–to access the content). For the most part, the column has been providing glimpses of the upcoming 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. When 4E was announced at GenCon, I was most excited about the online playing tools. Getting a group around a table is just not an option at this time in my life. I have several friends across the country that I enjoy playing with, and my experience with running a play-by-post game did not produce the results I was hoping for. However, I have some reservations about the direction the game mechanics are taking.

I’m not going to pass judgment until I’ve have a chance to peruse the published rules and taken them for a drive. I like what they are doing with monsters. As a DM, having defined roles–with abilities to back them up–is invaluable when putting together an encounter. I’m not so enthusiastic about their efforts to do the same with player classes.

D&D has always been class-based. The longer I’ve been playing RPGs, however, the more I gravitate toward open systems that give the player more freedom to customize their character. I liked the move toward skills and feats, as that opened up the options for players. According to a recent D&D column, 4E is moving away from that model. Many feats are becoming class features. Classes have defined roles (e.g., leader, defender, striker and controller). A bard is a Leader, a fighter is a defender. It smacks of MMO mechanics.

Perhaps that is intentional. I imagine there are more MMO players than D&D players, and the MMO market is a prime one for RPG tabletop games to target. The generation of players that have grown up with MMOs are used to well-defined roles for their online characters.

The key will be the other half of character design: the “build”. From the “Feats” article:

After some discussion, we came to see feats as the “fine-tuning” that your character performed after defining his role (via your choice of class) and his build (via your power selections). Feats would let characters further specialize in their roles and builds, as well as to differentiate themselves from other characters with similar power selections.

This is where a lot of MMOs fail. There tend to be disparities between the selection of available skills/powers/feats. Some underperform in the play environment and some provide incredible synergies. MMO players gravitate toward the optimal builds in order to be more successful, and you end up with a lot of cookie cutter characters.

Of course, D&D benefits from a more fluid, adaptive play environment because of the DM. I can alter encounters to suit the character concepts my players develop.

Or I can just continue to throw stuff at them that exploits their weaknesses. >)

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