Parchment Bonfire: D&D 4th Edition

The Parchment Bonfire is a segment in which I provide an inept and lackluster review of a book, aid, software program, or other gaming product, and then decide whether every copy of it in existence should be burned in a gigantic bonfire (or not). Since a lacking review of the world's most popular role-playing game's latest spine-tingling version is such a rarity among all of the thorough and well-thought out reviews out there, I felt it my duty to toss the following around as a riposte.

There's this phenomenon that happens when you're playing 4th Edition. I call it the 'Same Thing Over and Over Effect,' and it's where your character does the same goddamn thing infinity times. Your At-Will Powers (otherwise known as your O-and-O Powers) are things like the Wizard's Magic Missle, where your Wizard zaps some blithering fuck every round until it dies. In gameplay terms, it's quick and easy to do, makes combat more balanced and streamlined, and cuts down on complicated spellbooks. It also gets real boring, real quick.

To date I've been involved in two different 4E campaigns, one with each of my two gaming groups. Being a lazy gamer, I did not go to the trouble of choosing two characters of differing roles in the party. I did roll up two, but they are both male Elf Rangers in the most wicked way. I think I chose maybe one power differently between them, so besides their attribute scores being roughly dissimilar they are pretty much the same guy. So while I own the three rulebooks in the basic set and a copy of Thunderspire Labyrinth, and I have perused the books to a large extent, my actual play experience is limited to the heroic tier (a.k.a. the first few levels).

Let me tell you an adventure story. In the first session I ever played of 4E, we're strolling through the quintessential kobold-laden 1st-level dungeon, minding our own party business, when all of a sudden my Ranger gets slaughtered by a pack of lizard-y dog beasts. That's the dramatic and condensed version of the story, but my character did take it. Hard. The ranged Ranger (sic) is quite the beast himself, but his Prime Shot ability is a deathtrap. I'm not sure who thought that it would be a good idea for a distance-oriented fighter to have a power that requires him to be the closest dude to the enemy, but I'm not gonna lie: even the measly to-hit bonus seemed well worth it, especially at first level.

So the whole thing happens like this: as I advance into a room chock full of kobolds chucking rocks down on us from a parapet above, a pair of double doors open and these lizard-thing-beasts run out and devour my character. It doesn't take them long to drop my precious elf, and then the DM allows them - and in fact, directly causes them - to continue eating his tasty elf flesh until death occurs. I'm not sure why our DM is so unrelenting; maybe it's because I have been texting for half the game session and I'm not really paying attention. Allow me to explain.

As I lay dying, I'm wondering to myself what the hell having more hit points means if I'm going to die just as quickly. In 4th Edition I get 25 hit points instead of 8 to start out, but instead of doing 3 damage per hit, 1st-level monsters do 9 damage per. That's fantastic. Of course I'm exaggerating, and my complaints come from the fact that I am bitter because I'm such a horrible D&D player that I couldn't even make my character survive a single gaming session before taking the shaft.

My full review, as you can see, and my overall opinion of the game, is that it's quicker and more simplified than 3.5, but I'm also more bored by it when we play rules-heavy. As a skeletal system, it does the trick to balance the game out, but I think in this case balance has reduced variety in a significant way. I will end with this; my thoughts on 4th Edition, as well as my opinions thereof, are inconclusive! So for now, I'm going to spare this game from the Bonfire. Keep it secret, keep it safe!