Me? Sneaky? Never...

Hehe, I am actually :).

(paste/copy advertise)
Anycase as note to peeps in here (as I like all/most of you as gamers) come check out my game which I plan GM (information about Alundra not needed to play).

In Player's Wanted seek Alundra (4th edition DnD game).

http://www.wizards.com/default...x=dnd/4news/20090428

Try 4th Edition - for free!  The H1 adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, along with the quick start rules and pregenerated characters, are now available for download.  And if you don't want to use the pre-gens, having been told that they suck, you can download the Character Builder, which will let you build a character of levels 1 through 3, using material from both PHB1 & PHB2, without a subscription to D&D Insider.  It'll give you a filled-out character sheet, ready to be printed.

Enjoy!  :-)

so overall after reading these posts it appears you guys like it.


Does it grow on you ? 4th ed ?

I still do not have any books and have not played it, just curious.

I've DM'd AD&D, 3E, and 4E, and 4E is my favorite so far.

I've not really gotten the chance to play much, I always seem to end up as the DM, so I can't really comment from a player's perspective.  My players like it better than 3.5E by far, though, and most like it better than AD&D (though there are a few who are nostalgic for the brokenness of the old-school AD&D multi-class system and the Skills and Powers books....)
This message was last edited by the player at 17:37, Wed 06 May 2009.

I haven't really had a chance to play it; as every time I try to start playing a game online, the game seems to crash and burn in 4E; and my tabletop group doesn't want to convert right now.

From what I can tell from reading; it's not a bad system. I prefer 3.5 at a glance, but not to the point of despising 4E; just a preference.

I am working on a 4.0 Character Builder/Compendium written in javascript.

http://dnd4characterbuilder.i8.com/

any feedback would be welcome!

 Having now actually played Fourth edition under a fairly good GM, I have to say that I won't be touching it again with a ten-foot pole - we've run 3.0 and 3.5 games since they came out (and I've got a couple of old games that came in boxes lying around here somewhere all dog-eared from when we ran them first) and they've been a lot of fun.
 We got bored sick of Fourth Edition in about two months.

 On the other hand it has a lot of good ideas we've stolen - the condensed skills seemed like a great idea (stealth and perception, athletics, disable device handling both locks and traps) so we've nicked them for 3.x games. Skill challenges are outright brilliant, and we've stolen them too.
 They work just fine in 3.x.

 The condensed monster sheets and 'mooks' work when taken back an edition too - without the godawful 'it has more hit points because it's a boss' piece of utterly flow-breaking metagame 'balancing'.

 Class and character balance and 'you must have X to be any good' has never been an issue in our local games anyway (most of us got bored of optimised killer builds in our teens and generally now only break them out for giggles) and any GM worth his dice can spot the most popular exploits and come down on their user like a tonne of anti-magic fields in the tarrasque's stomach (I will never get tired of remembering the look on that 'I'll kill it by myself!' putz's face. ^_^)

 We've played around with the Star Wars wounds/vitality system for a while in D&D (and that worked nicely) before going back to hit points as they're meant to be used (a combination 'arnie factor' and actual injury) which meant that we've also tried out a few 4th-Edition style 'second wind' powers that generally operated off a hero/action point pool not entirely unlike the ones suggested in various 3.x house rule collections.

 I think the final analysis with our whole local gaming group was just that Fourth Edition feels like a follow-up to games like HeroQuest or the excellent 'Descent: Journeys in the Dark' and Third Edition feels more like a fantasy RPG in which it's equally possible to play a blacksmith-turned adventurer as it is Generic Hero #3 and have the rules in place to round you out.
 You pays your money, you makes your choice.

So ummm... other than a fighter mage... no wait, IS that all a swordmage is?

I think the main question for me is, is it really worth the considerable investment of cash to make the switch? I like 3.0 and 3.5! They revamped the system from the muck that 2E became and made it playable. Some of us invested quite a sum on these editions and have built whole game worlds based on the mechanics as an inspiration.

Yes. I know that I can get every 4E book ever published on 4shared.com or any of a dozen other sites for free, but that's not what WoC intended. To make a change over would take a few hundred dollars and I am not about to miss a month of rent to play a game.

Been there. Done that.

So I ask a general opinion from those who have ponied up the shekels: Is it worth it?

truthfully it is only worth it if you feel it is. When alot of my friends started switching to 4th edition and starting new games I told them yeah I may get the books but I won't be getting them quickly as I have a few hundred if not near a thousand or more dollars (US) tied up in 3.0/3.5 materials. In the time since 4th came out i have gotten maybe 5 or 6 of the books total and have only played it a couple times filling in for a missing player in a friend's campaign.

 A bunch of my friends bought up the books as they came out... They've now almost all been returned to the second hand shelf of the local game store. While they've kept all their 3.x stuff.

 But your mileage may vary - the best advice really is to try it before you buy.

Good advice....

Try before you buy


At least now you can get the books on PDF....lol

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/TryDnD.aspx - for anyone who wants to give 4E a try, here's a free download of the quick start rules as well as the Keep on the Shadowfell module.  I've ran about half of it myself, and the players seemed to have a good time, so it's worth checking out, I think.  And you can't really argue with the price, either.  ;-)

has anyone looked at the free 5e basic rules. its about 110 pages long.

I have run a few sessions of Next or 5e during the open Beta period. It's much more to my liking than 4e and even 3e.

In reply to DM solo (msg # 162):

In some ways it reminds me of ADnD 1st edition more about how they describe the relationship between the heros and the "mundanes".  As I still consider myself a first editionner I guess that says something.

I just took a look at the free .pdf download... actually looks playable.
I was impressed with how much they seemed to simplify things and return to the old basics of 1st and 2nd edition.

I also saw that their first two adventures are going to be set in the Realms. :D
Hoard of the Dragon Queen (8/19)
Rise of Tiamat (10/21)

Anyone up for trying them out?

I'd be willing to give them a shot.

I did a little bit of playing with Solo, and I think I like the way that they set it up.

I'd say it's a bit of a mix of 2 and 4.  (During play-testing they still had at will spells for the lower level spells (like read magic, detect magic, magic missile and I think a few others)  But once you got outside the first level spells it was a lot more like 2nd edition.

While play testing I think it most resembled a mix of some of the better things of 4th edition (at will spells for the really low level stuff) and things that were better handled in 3.5.  I think skills and such were simplified too...  like 2nd where you had a few proficiencies.

I'm up for trying out the adventures, sure!

So, 5e: any players?

I'd be up for playing 5e actually. Though not those two set in the realms as I'm playing them somewhere else.

Which two?

Hoard of the Dragon Queen for starters. Probably followed by Rise of Tiamat.

Ok, we'll look for something else then. I'll send out a request for PC's shortly.