I’m not sure if this was existing FR canon or not, but it’s a neat concept and could provide DMs a way to link apparently disconnected locations (cemetery’s and the like) with a common plot thread.  The preview PDF includes the stats for the Direhelm, a level 15 soldier, and the Doomswept, a level 16 skirmisher.

Blizzard, on top of their hugely successful MMO and their popular TCG are now out to capture the collectible miniatures market with the help of trading card partner and baseball card industry monster Upper Deck.  Wizards of the Coast better watch out or they’re going to get edged right out of the market.

I was told that they are changing the direction and format of the Eberron line, and that is why several new trilogies (mine included) were axed.

I have received general information from my editor, but I am still awaiting specifics about the new direction (which are supposed to come from the brand team I guess).

Here are a few other interesting links with tidbits about the cancellations.
Candlekeep’s Discussion
Matt Forbeck’s Blog post
Jeff LaSala’s Blog post
Marsheila Rockwell’s Blog post
Paul S. Kemp’s Blog post

I (finally) got my box set of 4e books two weeks ago, so I thought, now that I’ve held them in my hands and read them over, I’d do a little mini-review of some of the changes 4e has in store for gamers.

Player’s Handbook

Races

The races are well-presented, and actually seem pretty versatile. While 3e went a long way towards making previously unheard of race/class combos possible (such as dwarven wizards), 4e took the next step by eliminating racial ability score penalties. Now you can play a dwarven warlock (a charisma-based class), and if you start with an 18 in Charisma, you get to keep it (and your Constitution and Wisdom scores will get a little help as well). This is nicely done, for the most part. It’s still best, price-wise, to use your ability scores so that your racial bonuses increase your highest starting ability score.

In terms of mechanics, I’d give the races a solid B+, as they provide a ton of opportunities for interesting character opportunities. All of the races seem interesting with their own opportunities, and the races don’t seem as limited as they have been in previous editions to certain class choices. That’s not to say that there aren’t still less-optimal choices (dwarven rogues or rangers wouldn’t benefit much from dwarven abilities), but I do like what’s been done in this chapter.

I read through it and had ideas for how I’d like to play each race (I was considering a dragonborn paladin to add a little bit of a controller feel to the class with that per-encounter breath weapon, humans as the best multiclassers with their additional at-will power to go to another class, eladrin as potentially awesome warlocks using teleport to increase mobility, etc.)

However, I am a little disappointed with the lack of half-orcs and gnomes. I know that half-orcs only seem to show up in the odd-numbered editions, but one of my players from my old face-to-face group loved his half-orc barbarian, Shump Shumpson III. Personally, I miss gnomes, who I never liked until 3.5 in Races of Stone, which made them into a surprisingly deep, interesting race. I’m also not quite sold on Dragonborn or Tiefling as “common” player races yet. They seem very interesting, and I like their background as suggested in the PHB, but they still feel a little “too exotic”. On the other hand, elves and eladrin, who are supposed to be fey and mystic, don’t quite seem exotic enough with Dragonborn and Tieflings hanging around. This is hardly the elves’ fault, as they’ve been slumming with humans since the 1970s. I think this is why I’m so interested in seeing how 4e campaign settings include these races, because while they’re interesting, they’re not races or roles in which I’m experienced using. I have ideas for how I’d use them, but I’d like to see what other settings do with them as well. In the area of racial selection, I give the PHB a C+. Really, not bad at all, with lots of variety right in the PHB, but maybe not the right variety.

Races Overall: B

Classes

I love what they did with the classes in 4e: they’re all pretty well balanced, but the experience of playing each one is completely different. Strikers feel different than defenders who feel different than leaders. And even among the strikers, the classes feel different. A warlock and a ranger feel different, thanks to their powers selection, their class abilities, and the like. Even with a similar base mechanic for character abilities, they feel different. A ranger feels like he’s skulking through the shadows to line up a perfect shot, while the warlock is flitting about like some imp or fay and tormenting someone with arcane trickery, and the rogue is ducking in and out of cover to catch someone from behind with a sharp knife. The cleric feels like the champion of a deity and the warlord feels like a battlefield commander.

I also hate what they did with the classes in 4e: it’s really tough to make anything but a big, buff fighter with the fighter class. In 3e, I could make a fighter into a big bruiser or a nimble fencer or a nasty archer, or just add a little bit of martial prowess onto any other class. This versatility was one of my favorite features of the 3e rogue. In 4e, a chunk of this versatility was sacrificed in the interest of defining the classes to be unique.

Part of this loss of versatility comes with the new way multiclassing is handled. In 4e, multiclassing is enabled by a chain of feats which grant you more and more abilities from another class. Essentially, you first take a feat like “Arcane Initiate”, which grants you the ability to use one wizard at-will spell as an encounter power. Then, you follow the Novice Power to Acolyte Power to Adept Power feat chain, which allows you to swap out your existing at-will and encounter powers for those of another class. Then, once you reach level 11, if you have all four feats, you can multiclass, taking the new class in place of your paragon class, and allowing you to take powers from that class. However, instead of your paragon path powers, you get to “catch up” with powers ranging from about 4 levels lower to 1 level lower than your paragon path powers.

I’m still not quite sold on this method. On one hand, it does a great job of ensuring that multiclassing isn’t impossible for one class (in the way it was so painful for spellcasters in 3e), and for that area, I have to applaud it. However, the new system of spending feats to gain access to new powers unfortunately means that if you want to multiclass, all classes pay relatively heavily for it, and the payoff doesn’t come until relatively far into the game. In practice, it plays similar to some of the more convoluted builds in 3e which didn’t start getting good until level 8 or 9, especially ones which required you to take “throwaway” feats or class levels to accomplish your ends. The nice part, though, is that you can “put off” having to take feats which don’t benefit you until later on, retraining existing feats (which I’ll discuss more later), so it isn’t quite as bad.

For the individual classes, I have to give them a relatively good A-. Each one is great, and could be playable right through 30 levels, with tons of interesting things to do. I feel like there’s a good number of options, and choices to fit most playstyles, and all of the classes look like they’ll be great fun to play. And honestly, they seem pretty well-balanced: casters aren’t going to automatically dominate at high levels. I think the fighter might be able to outshine certain strikers around mid-level from time to time, and the cleric looks like a slightly stronger leader than the warlord. This is a level of balance among the classes that D&D’s never seen before, and it looks like it’ll basically hold up over 30 levels of play. And they’ve managed to do this while still making sure each class feels unique. That’s an accomplishment.

However, for versatility and the ability to take a class in a new and interesting direction, like turning the rogue into a handsome gentleman-fencer in 3e with no interest in disarming traps, is much more difficult in 4e. In some ways, the sheer new-ness of 4e benefits it, as someone like me might be distracted enough with the new shinies to play with before I really want to spread my wings and try a really out-there character concept. And when I do, there’ll probably be fresh classes to try in new Players’ Handbooks. And honestly, there’s a lot to play with just within the existing classes. It’ll be awhile before we can explore everything these classes are capable of. That’s why I’m still comfortable giving classes a C- for versatility. And what they lack in flexibility, they do make up for in identity, which they come through in spades.

Classes Overall: B-

Skills

There’s not too much to say about skills. I still definitely prefer the freedom to buy which skills you want when you want (I had a 3.0 fighter/rogue/spymaster who had smatterings in so many skills that he was just so much fun to play). I’m a skill point junkie. No two ways about it.

However, I must say there are things that 4e did right.

Skills in 4e are more like abilities that level up right alongside your character. You still choose what level of proficiency you have with any given skill to a degree by choosing which skills you’re trained in, or which skills you’ve mastered. Based on which class you pick, you can choose from a small number of trained skills (which grant you a +5 bonus to checks with that trained skill). All classes gain at least three trained skills and up to six (for the rogue), though some classes also have one or two of these skills picked for them from the get-go. Clerics start with Religion and three other skills trained. Rogues have Stealth and Thievery as well as four other skills. Rangers get to choose between Nature and Dungeoneering, as well as four other skills. If a skill isn’t trained, you get a bonus to checks with that skill equal to ½ your level. On the other hand, if you want to really max out a certain skill, you can pick the Skill Mastery feat to grant one of your trained skills an extra +3 bonus. You can also pick up additional skill training (even in non-class skills) with the Skill Training feat.

On the good side, this means that everyone can take part in non-combat challenges (such as the new feature of skill challenges, which I’ll discuss below). One iconic example is dumping the party overboard into stormy seas. If you set the swim check DC high enough that the characters in the party with ranks in Swimming are challenged, everyone else who ignored the skill is probably going to drown. On the other hand, if you make it low enough so that the characters without ranks can survive, the characters who have ranks in the skill are probably guaranteed success. The other iconic scenario is trying to sneak into a guarded area. Unless the DC is set low enough for the non-stealth characters to succeed, then the stealth-based characters are guaranteed to succeed, regardless of their rolls. And since the group is going in together, if one character fails, everyone fails.

Under 4e, these scenarios are much easier to run. For group challenges like sneaking into a guarded area, everyone has a reasonable chance of succeeding. Nobody’s left out. Characters who specialize in an area are still the best candidates for more difficult checks (such as getting the rogue with maxed-out thievery to open the locked door in the dungeon rather than letting the untrained-but-reasonably-high-level-cleric putz around with it for awhile before getting it open), so they still get to shine for their skill choices.

With the advent of Skill Challenges, this becomes essential. A Skill Challenge is a more-formalized series of skill checks. Characters are presented with a task (such as finding the next dungeon in the forgotten forest), and have a certain number of successes they must roll in order to achieve that goal. If they fail too many checks, they fail the challenge and something bad happens (such as becoming hopelessly lost in their search for the next dungeon). Certain skills work best for certain types of challenges (as chosen by the DM), and have lower DCs. Some skills might only work once in a challenge (as a success later in the challenge won’t provide any new benefit… the DMG suggests a fighter climbing a tree with Athletics and looking for gaps in the trees to find a hidden temple to be such a limited skill). Since everyone in the party has at least reasonable levels of skill, everyone can participate in these challenges, just as everyone can in combat encounters.

The other nice thing about 4e skills is the attempt at consolidation. Now, conceptually-linked skills are combined into a single package. For instance, Hide and Move Silently from 3e are now Stealth in 4e; Acrobatics covers Balance, Escape Artist, and Tumble. Combining skills which are conceptually-linked for most characters is a nice change of pace. For skills like Stealth, it cuts down on the number of rolls you need to make to resolve something like an infiltration (as opposed to rolling two checks every step along the way). It also makes it easier to create a character who can legitimately do everything you expect of that character without the dreaded “I forgot to take ranks in that” coming up (as my friend’s first rogue in 3e did when he had Hide but hadn’t even realized that he needed Move Silently too).

Once again, the story for 4e continues to be “A little easier to play, a little tougher to customize”. No longer can you spread yourself across many skills at a lower level or choose to consolidate and specialize in a smaller skill area. Admittedly, for most of my characters, I tended to pick a number of skills equal to the number of skill points I’d get per level and just put my level +3 ranks in each skill, and then customize from there as needed/desired. I’ll miss that, though. Skills are overall fairly well-done, earning a B, with a B+ once you add in Skill Challenges to your customization. However, once again, versatility has taken a hit. Not as bad as with classes, but still not good enough to earn more than a C.

Skills Overall: B-

Feats

Feats haven’t changed much mechanically, but conceptually, they’re a radically different beast in 4e than they were in 3e. In 3e, characters generally used feats to unlock new abilities (especially in sourcebooks) with feats like Natural Spell, or to specialize an existing ability with feats like Attack Focus. In 4e, most feats are there to enhance a character’s existing abilities. Some skills allow you to access new abilities (like Skill Training or the multiclass feats), but most simply allow you to enhance a favorite class power. Some skills are more general, allowing you to gain a bonus to certain types of attacks (such as attacks with the necrotic or psychic keywords). Others are quite specific, such as ones which grant a specific bonus to a specific class ability (such as the warlord’s Tactical Assault power, which lets characters benefiting from it to add the warlord’s Intelligence modifier when he has the Tactical Presence class feature and an ally uses an action point to make an attack).

Feats are also divided by level, and organized into Heroic Tier, Paragon Tier, and Epic Tier feats. In 3e, a character would get a total of 7 feats by level 20 (barring racial or class abilities), while in 4e, characters gain a total of 12 by level 20, 18 overall (or 6 feats per tier). Unfortunately, the game so far doesn’t have a huge selection of feats, despite the greater number of feats a character has access to. This, coupled with the function of feats to generally improve existing abilities makes most feats less suitable to customizing a character outside of his role. However, other feats are built especially for this purpose. If you want a spellcaster in heavy armor, you’ll need to spend feats. If you want to take skills outside of your class, you need to spend feats. And if you want multiclassing, you need feats.

This change in the role of feats really isn’t a bad thing. For this new system, they seem like they’ll work really well: if you want to improve a favorite ability, you spend feats. In this area, feats get an A-. However, there just aren’t enough feats to allow the character customization that you might be accustomed to, and specifically, not enough feats with versatility over specialization in mind. This is a big change from the 3e mentality, and while once again, I’m sure that more versatility will become possible with future supplements. In 3e, characters were built level-by-level with whatever class level or feats worked best to realize the character concept. In 4e, characters are going to be relatively decided from the get-go, starting with an iconic character concept and then tweaking it from there.

Feats Overall: B

Equipment

There are a few changes in the equipment chapter, some of them extreme, some of them simple. Armor is one of the more simple changes. Now, instead of there being light, medium, and heavy armor, there is just light and heavy. You also classify armor by the type: cloth, leather, and hide armor are light while chainmail, scale, and plate are heavy. Each of these types comes into play at different points in the course of the game. For the most part, light or heavy determine your proficiency with equipment at the start of the game, while after 1st level (though casters like the warlock and wizard are limited to just low-level armor like cloth), you can expand your armor proficiency by taking feats to use increasingly heavy types of armor. The armor table also lists “special” materials you can use to make armor (which at first glance are a little confusing, but they simple serve as enhanced “bases” for enchanted armors), marking the first time that such special materials appear in the “basic” item section.

The change to weapons is a little more extreme, but still not bad overall. Once again, weapons are classified in two ways: by overall quality (simple, military, or superior) and by type (light blade, mace, bow, etc.). Once again, the first classification comes into play mostly at level 1, all but the rogue have their weapon proficiencies designated in such a way. The second classification (type) matters only to determine whether or not you can use a given weapon as an implement for a power. For instance, many rogue exploits require the rogue to be wielding a light blade. I’ve been a fan of weapon groups for awhile, and the two-classification system actually does a nice job of providing weapons of varying quality within a given group (for light blades, a dagger is considered simple (1d4 damage), a short sword is military (1d6) and a rapier is superior (1d8), and they’re all one-handed). I sort of wish that the weapon groups mattered for proficiency more (where classes were proficient not with “simple melee” weapons, but “simple light blade, simple mace, and simple spear” to add more variety to the classes, or letting characters choose a number of weapon group proficiencies at level 1 (such as a rogue getting simple light blades and 2 other simple weapon groups, or the fighter getting three military weapon groups and one superior weapon group), but this is just a “wouldn’t it be cool if” and not really a weakness of the system.

There is one big improvement to weapons: standardized “special properties”. No longer do you need to follow the chart all the way down to the asterisks only to see that you now need to flip forward to find out just what’s special about a given weapon. Instead, there’s another column on the chart which says quite clearly if a weapon has properties like “versatile” (a one-handed weapon which can be wielded two-handed for a bonus to damage), “off-hand” (you can wield it while also wielding another weapon, gaining the option to attack with either weapon on a given turn), or “free load” (you don’t need to spend any actions reloading a ranged weapon). These things are standardized now. Much, much better.

However, I have to bring things down a little (very little, admittedly) with the way proficiencies after level 1 are handled once again. For weapons, it’s basically the same (if you want proficiency in a new weapon that you didn’t start out proficient with, you have to spend a feat). For armor, no longer can you buy proficiency in all heavy armors with a single feat. Instead, you have to step up through a feat chain to gain those proficiencies. And since you can only ever really gain new “class proficiencies” if you pick a specific paragon path or epic destiny (and even then it’s pretty limited to a single theme, like the angelic avenger granting a cleric training with a single heavy blade), it’s a long climb for anyone trying to take a wizard and create an effective fighter-mage. This is the basic pattern for 4e: it’s pretty easy to improve your character so long as you stick to your class’ shtick (wizards wear no armor and sling spells, fighters take weapons and apply the business end gingerly to the faces of opponents, etc.), but if you want to bend that shtick in some way (such as having your wizard take weapons and apply the business end gingerly to the faces of opponents), you’ve got an up-hill climb ahead of you.

In another jarring change, 4e places all the magic item rules right in the equipment chapter, and magic items have changed significantly from 3e. For one, characters need fewer magic items to be effective (a very good thing in my mind). Characters can keep getting ever-improving weapon and armor pluses (which is assumed by the system), but outside of making newer and better magic weapons and magic armor, the system is pretty lax. In general, most magic items provide you with a new daily power you can use. I for one have to applaud the decisions behind amulets especially. All amulets provide a bonus to your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses in addition to their other powers, so no longer do you need to give up having another neat ability just because you can’t afford to let your defenses drop. This is the one case in 4e where the game encourages versatility and extra abilities instead of improving the ones you already have. For instance, even a fighter who puts on a Halo of Fallen Stars gets the ability to blast an enemy who attacks you for 5d6 damage and blind them. Definitely out of a fighter’s usual realm of ability.

I’d rate the armor section around a solid B+. I would’ve preferred more up-front explanation of the special armors instead of having me flip around for a few minutes before I could grasp them, and I’m not really happy with how darn hard it is now to get yourself more armor proficiency (but that’s luckily a minor point). I do like the new classification system quite a bit, and all the armors seem like they’re both interesting and useful. Weapons get a solid A: other than my wish for a system that included weapon groups a little more in determining proficiency, the work here is excellent. Magic items get a similar A, almost an A+, but I reserve that A+ for systems that are more open to DM tinkering (I would’ve preferred if different effects were broken down by cost, allowing you to “point buy” different abilities for custom magic items rather than a catalog of magic items, but that’s D&D for you).

Equipment Overall: A

Adventuring & Combat

One of the big changes in the overall structure of adventures is the concept of “milestones” and how they interact with the pace of an adventure. Every two encounters you complete grants you a bonus action point, which allows you to use certain powerful paragon-level abilities or to gain an additional action during your turn (but you can only use one per encounter). This is meant to encourage players to keep going during an adventure rather than just resting because the spellcaster wasted all his best spells after the first encounter of the day. To be blunt, I don’t think the limited application of action points are enough to be a game-changer. After all, you reset you action points to 1 every time you rest (which is also how you regain your daily powers), so if a group is seriously powering through in the most efficient way, it’s still always best to blow your dailies and action points in the first encounter and then rest. Unfortunately, the game isn’t going to help solve their 15-minute adventuring day problem.

Where it will help is with groups who want to go on without resting, but feel as though they couldn’t. Those groups might be lacking a few of their daily powers, but so long as they get a steady stream of action points every two encounters, it might encourage them to keep going, letting them spend two encounter powers each right at the beginning to plow through an otherwise-tough battle. But since action points are essentially encounter powers themselves, the only time hording them ever pays off is if you know that at the end of your adventure, you’re going to have a series of two or more difficult encounters. This is tough for the players to know, and makes hording action points a little less attractive.

Rest has also changed for the better. Now in addition to camping for the night, you can take a short rest to essentially “take five (minutes)”. By doing that, you regain your encounter powers and can spend healing surges to heal yourself (more on that below). Essentially, by “taking five”, you might be a little chipped around the edges, but you’ll be pretty capable of heading into the encounter. A very, very nice addition. Not only will this help “solve” the 15-minute adventuring day problem for most types of players (as characters will pretty much be good to go so long as they have healing surges to spend), but it answers the question many people had about when encounter powers reset. Any time you can take five, you good to go.

I’ll also briefly mention rewards here. The DMG goes into detail about “treasure parcels”, an absolutely excellent idea. You just pick an entry that’s appropriate for the party’s level and you’re done, vastly simplifying things. Again, I tend to prefer flexibility, but as someone running a game, I also appreciate aids like this that help me get the job done quickly. The DMG also details things like Quest XP rewards, which are again excellent to see in print, if not exactly novel ideas.

In combat, all the basics are still there. Characters get move and standard actions (and a minor action too), they roll for initiative, and then they get to killing some monsters. The main difference is that 4e now assumes that a character’s basic action on any given round is no longer “attack with my weapon”: now it’s “use one of my at-will powers”. Using a basic attack with a weapon is almost always weaker than using one of your “at-will” powers, and the only time you’ll really do it is out of desperation (such as a fighter who needs to hit a distant enemy right away, but won’t be able to close and use an at-will exploit in time pulling out a bow and attacking). My only complaint with this set-up is a philosophical one, that the focus of the game shifts from “what we can do” to “what members of this class can do”. I prefer flexibility, so this isn’t my cup of tea, but in-play, you probably can’t tell the difference between the fighters shouting “I attack” and the fighter shouting “I reaping strike”. Guess what: it still works great, my personal philosophy aside.

On the plus side, I like Combat Advantage, even if I feel like it could do more. Essentially, combat advantage grants you bonuses against an enemy who is in any number of what would be separate conditions, like balancing, blinded, prone, flanked, surprised, stunned, or running. All of these situations now grant the same bonus, and allows you to use powers which require combat advantage. I would have preferred if combat advantage were more universal (covered more situations which are still covered by separate rules in 4e, like high ground), but again, that’s a philosophical difference. You trade a little more book-flipping or chart-referencing for a little better precision. I also like what’s happened with Opportunity Attacks. Now only three things provoke Opportunity Attacks: leaving a square adjacent to you or using a ranged or area attack while adjacent to you. And since the only way you can cleave now is with a non-basic attack, it also eliminates the old complaint about “getting cleaved because my buddy drew an attack of opportunity”.

Healing is also improved, in my mind. Healing surges are nice. Once again, they nicely standardize the concept of healing, where most healing powers and abilities take up a healing surge and grant you the same number of hit points back (¼ of your hit point total). So that means that even a fighter who’s beaten and bloodied on his last quarter of hit points can sit down for 15 minutes and be ready for the next encounter, and you don’t need the cleric to run around with a wand of cure light wounds to do it. This reinforces that hit points aren’t really “injuries”, but scrapes and bruises and endurance all rolled into one. Healing becomes mostly an art of “catching your breath” until someone is actually on the ground bleeding out. All things considered, a nice improvement that helps keep the pace of the game going.

Combat & Adventuring Overall: A-

Rituals

Rituals are, in a word, fantastic. All my complaints about there being a lack of versatility and all the complaints you’ve heard about everyone’s powers just being combat powers goes out the window when you consider rituals.

In essence, rituals are spells that take more than 1 round to cast, and most importantly, spells that anyone can cast. These cover all sorts of non-combat utility roles, from repairing items to opening locked doors to creating illusions to scrying. And once again, anyone (who has the Ritual Caster feat) can do it. So it might be the rogue in the party who learns knock and the ranger who learns commune with nature while the warlock learns hallucinatory item and the paladin learns raise dead.

Rituals tend to fill the gaps left by the arcane and divine classes, which are largely non-combat utility spells. Unlike older editions, you’re not barred from these rituals if you’re not a spellcasting class, so no longer do caster classes quickly make non-casters obsolete. You get a ton of excellent stuff out of here, and I personally feel that it captures the “feel” of magic better than Vancean spells did in older editions. My only complaint once again is the lack of guidance for building new rituals.

Rituals overall: A

Player’s Handbook overall: B/B+

Dungeon Master’s Guide

I’ll be breezing over the other two tomes of the core rules, starting with the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The slimmest of the three books, this nevertheless manages to be the best DMG I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. It does the best job of teaching a DM how to be a DM yet. It provides great toolboxes (especially chapter 10) for letting the DM do with the game what he wants quickly and easily (a rarity in the PHB, admittedly).

The first few chapters are devoted to introducing a new DM to the concept of DMing, and how to teach the game to new players. It then progresses into guidelines for how to create adventures, how to run encounters, how to create non-combat encounters, and how to progress players, all with good advice (for the most part). This is where, for example, the rules detail how skill challenges work, a development that I greatly like (even if I prefer a slightly different method for achieving what is largely the same result). Chapter 5 in particular provides a plethora of options for different types of non-combat adventures, especially with a nice collection of traps.

The book continues to build from small (how to adjudicate the rules in chapter 1 and 2) to big (how to build a campaign in chapter 8 and a world in chapter 9). Chapter 9 also details a great take on artifacts, which are essentially intelligent magic items of great power which empower the wielder according to how well the goals of the artifact. So if you use the Axe of Dwarven Lords to go out, obey the dwarven king, slay some giants, and generally dwarf it up, the axe will reward you. If, on the other hand, if you use the axe to wage war on the dwarves, you’re going to find the axe being a little less cooperative. And eventually, all artifacts leave characters. It might be because you’ve achieved the goal of the artifact and it wishes you well before moving on, or it might be because you pissed off the Eye of Vecna once too often and it decides it’s had it.

The last chapter in the book after the excellent DM Toolbox in chapter 10 is what amounts to a mini-campaign setting called “Fellcrest” in chapter 11, which takes a lot of the advice from the previous 10 chapters and puts it to work. I can’t really comment on the setting other than to say that it would provide a good starting place for a new group, or for an experienced group who wanted to test 4e out without necessarily building a whole world around it.

DMG overall: A

Monster Manual

As a preface: I rarely get my money’s worth out of Monster Manuals of any sort, especially beyond the first (where the monsters can start to get silly… I mean, come on: FAIRY DRAGONS?!). That said, I’m not crying over the reduced number of monsters in the 4e MM. The ones that still are there are the meat and potatoes of fantasy adventures, and pound-for-pound I’d benefit more from an extra page on goblins with ideas for goblin casters and warriors and snipers right there than I would from an entry about flumphs, which I’d probably never use anyway. While I don’t mind there being decidedly weird creatures in the MM, I prefer all the monsters to be useful and to be established enough in popular mythology and popular concepts of fantasy that they’ll work across a broad swathe of games. Goblins, orcs, griffons, and hydras? Yes, please! Bears and wolves? Yes! Dragons and zombies? Yes! Those are what I want! That’s what this MM delivers! What I don’t want are critters like flumphs, digesters, or phantom fungi. These should be for later, more specialized supplements, such as monster collections for different campaign settings (like Forgotten Realms or Eberron) or for different types of monsters (like dragons, undead, etc.). As such, unlike many, I don’t mind that the MM doesn’t have as many monsters as it did in days gone by. The layout has improved drastically, I can get more millage out of the monsters that are there, and it just gives me more bang for my buck. Now, monsters are clearly organized by their role in battle, so I can flip around until I find an appropriate level 5 skirmisher to round out the fight. This is also nice because it lets me design not just what will be in the battle, but how they’ll act in the battle. Skirmishers play differently from lurkers who are different again from elites. And before I move on, I’ll add my voice to the praise for finally including minion rules. I’ve loved them ever since I started Mutants & Masterminds, and they really make it possible to give the players a challenging fight while still letting them cleave through a horde of enemies.

Speaking of the layout, it’s wonderful. Most monsters get a nice page or a two-page spread, so you can open you book to that page and be ready to go. Things don’t spill over across pages by a single essential paragraph or stat-block, leaving you flipping back and forth. When things do cover multiple pages, it’s like the goblin entry, which gives you four or five different kinds of goblins to use in an encounter across different goblin races, like hobgoblin or bugbear. This is another fantastic improvement in my mind.

The other thing I really do like from this MM is the glossary at the end, which includes very simple write-ups for racial traits for other favorite PC races, like the orc, minotaur, warforged, doppleganger, goblin, kobold, and even the gnome. So in the end, if you had an old favorite, you probably won’t be left hanging. Sure, I’m waiting for the gnome to get a serious write-up in a later book, but for now, I’m glad the writers of 4e threw this bone to fans of “discontinued” races.

All things considered, this is a good, solid book, but in recognition that some people like the plethora of different monsters to throw into battle, I can’t give it the high marks I gave the DMG.

Monster Manual overall: A-

Final Remarks

Overall, this edition of D&D isn’t half bad. It has its improvements, and it has its shortcomings, but most of those shortcomings are only in the eyes of someone likes me who likes to tinker and customize and create something different. I’ve played most of the fantasy archetypes and have, for the most part, moved on in terms of what I enjoy playing in fantasy games. The more-rigid definition of classes in 4e is a problem for me, as they cut too close to archetypes which I’m honestly bored with. I prefer classes as discrete units of abilities which you can pick and choose from, not as a central component of your character’s identity (is it any wonder that I’ve come to love point-buy systems?).

But for your gaming dollar, that might not be true. I know many people who are absolutely thrilled that the days of wild multiclassing are over, and that a character’s class is once again central to the character’s identity. Planning out a character’s growth might have been extremely fun for me, but for a lot of gamers, it was a headache. I recognize that. 4e definitely appeals to those players, who want to play a fun, effective character without needing to plan everything out from the start. Flexibility has been traded for utility: I might not be able to make a character who is a perfect blend of fighter, rogue, and illusionist through careful mutliclassing and feat selection anymore, but I can sit down and hammer out a fighter who will do his job well without worrying that I crippled my character because I took something like 3e Toughness.

This is a good edition of D&D. It’s different from 3e, with its own strengths (it plays fast, it’s fun, and it really lives up to a lot of good fantasy tropes) and its own weaknesses (the game makes it difficult to stray from an original concept and is still tough to customize) as well as its fair share of warts (in the form of some problems I have with the GSL and the D&D Insider so far). But for those of you who are worried that it’s not D&D, you really don’t have to. You still kill things and take their stuff. The group will still be filled with characters who are humans with pointy ears. It’s still a game with pseudo-medieval window dressings. You still brandish your +1 longswords and still cast magic missile. How you do those things might have changed a little, but at the end of the day, my face to face group would enjoy playing this game while they pop cheese puffs and make inappropriate jokes about horses riding their paladins.

If any of the ideas you read in this review sound interesting, give it a try. While it might not be the Game to End All Games, or the Greatest Edition of D&D Ever for Everyone, it’s still a solid edition of D&D, and one that has a lot to offer. I’ll personally be adding it to my shelf of games. It won’t be replacing my current games of choice, but would I play it or run it on the side? Absolutely.

Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition overall: A-

WotC has completely overhauled the skill challenge system in the DMG errata. All skill challenges now end with 3 failures regardless of complexity. So Complexity 5 challenges are going to be very difficult. However, WotC has also dropped the difficulty of all skill checks by 5. All Easy skill checks, whether part of a skill challenge or not, are now difficulty 5 instead of 10. Moderate skill checks are now DC 10 instead of 15, and Hard checks are now DC 15 instead of 20. This still scales up with level of course.

I like this change because it mean that you are no longer woefully incompetent in untrained skills and have a reasonable chance of even making a Hard DC with an untrained skill. And with a Trained skill, Hard DC’s should now be reasonably easy to make. Additionally, WotC added clarifying text that the point of a skill challenge isn’t for the whole party to line up behind a single expert. They now officially recommend that DMs limit the number of PCs who can use Aid Another to boost an ally’s check to only one or two.

Update (by Cameron) - I’m reposting this to note that the soon to be released DM Screen has posted errata on skill challenges too.

In all, I like how this adventure is structured.  Using the new landscape layout, David Noonan has managed to craft a fairly detailed entry point for 1st level characters.  The setting of Elsir Vale is geographically unchanged from the Red Hand, although the social landscape has shifted dramatically.  The Red Hand’s uprising has psychologically and emotionally scarred the Vale’s residents, particularly those living in the capitol city of Brindol.  The monsters and NPCs presented are pretty well fleshed out, and the adventure itself reads like a fun game.

I do have one complaint though--the adventure starts in a tavern in Brindol with a bar brawl and ends with a mission to rescue some citizens from a location named (ready for it?) Rivenroar.  The rescue mission is a stage-setting to envelop players into the machinations of Sinruth, a hobgoblin chieftain with dreams of raising the Red Hand again, and ultimately leads to the larger threat behind Sinruth.  The adventure itself looks like it will play out enjoyably, but the trope of a tavern fight as a way to introduce player characters to each other is something that I know I’ve deliberately tried to avoid since I started Dungeon Mastering.  It’s a shame to see it here.

The art, all done by Jason Engle, is nice but quite frankly there just isn’t enough of it.  The cartography by Mike Schley is decent enough, but the pixellation as you zoom in means you really can’t use the maps for table-top.  It’s one of the few things I really thought might come out of Dungeon being online, and it is a disappointment to find that I will still end up having to recreate the maps in third party software to use in face to face games.  A few hi-res maps to print and use with miniatures would be a welcome change to gaming.