REVIEW: 4TH EDITION DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE PART I

By James Treu

Well, here it is the long-promised review of the 4E DMG.

Some preface is necessary. First of all, this core book was obviously written with a philosophy of making it seem not so overwhelming to newbies. Given how hard it apparently is for players to find a Dungeon Master (DM) that will run something other than a one-shot, (let alone find a decent DM), the need to simplify things and increase the DM population is understandable. Therefore, this book is relatively short, about a hundred pages shorter than the 3.5 (DMG) Dungeon Masters Guide. So obviously stuff has been left out, stuff that will likely be seen in a future sourcebook. The 75 or so pages about magic items are obviously missing, since magic items are in the Players Hand Book (PHB) now (and even there, the magic item section is pretty short). A smattering of other stuff is gone too, but in general, what is missing from the 4E DMG in comparison to the 3.5 DMG are the details-and the detailed explanations.

Just one example: The number and kind of traps. Very small in the 4E DMG compared to the 3.5 DMG. Other things are similar. Terrain is a big thing in the 3.5 DMG; in the 4E DMG it is almost invisibly small outside of combat applications. One can hope a DMG II or III will have something about them as well as a lot of 3.5 DMG II things that would have been nice to see.

Okay, onto the chapter by chapter review:

Every chapter has an overview and a table of contents with a short description of the major things in the chapter. Neat feature.

The beginning chapter gives some good info on how to be a DM, including a pretty good section on player motivations that will help DMs help players fulfill what they want out of the game.

Chapter 2 on Running the Game features two-page artwork that is straight from the Lost Caverns of Tsojancth module, but brand new. Great stuff! Anyway, this chapter includes a two-page section on dispensing information. It mostly agrees with what I’ve been saying about information release, divinations, etc. For instance: “If allowing the ritual to succeed would throw a monkey wrench into your plans for the adventure, you’d be within your rights to rule that the ritual failed to locate the intended target because the caster’s description wasn’t specific enough.”

The chapter concludes with a section on teaching the game to newbies.

Short, but good.

Chapter 3 covers Combat Encounters, and has a section on actions the rules don’t cover, complete with DC and damage by level. The DCs have already been errated by WotC. The rest of the chapter has all the usual, although streamlined, stuff on things like aquatic combat, mounted combat, and flying, but also features the new disease rules, which feel more like diseases now that they have a progression and recovery sliding scale. These have been heavily errated by WotC too, so be careful (and cripes, even their errata is terribly done, with mistakes and typos in it!). The poisons of the game are here too, with their market costs and attacks and damage.

Chapter 4 is about building encounters, and is actually well presented given the assumptions of 4E. The monster roles, building the encounters to level and balancing them, are well done considering that, and even include encounter templates. There’s additional stuff on terrain, including fantastic terrain, but only as dealing with “encounters.” There’s stuff about light sources, vision, etc. Illusions are cleared up considerably: they DON’T do any actual damage, and interacting with them probably reveals their true nature.

Damage to objects doesn’t include a hardness category (DR for items). It’s all about hit points now. This is oversimplification. This kind of thing gets you punching through stone walls, or smashing iron chests with little more than your bare hands. Yuck. Sure, the irritating 3E situation of adventurers carving their way physically through a dungeon was stupid, but that sort of thing should have been corrected, not replaced with overly simplified foolishness like this.

Chapter 5 is about noncombat encounters. Skill Challenges are here, and various samples given. They’re done a bit oddly, however. After inexplicably making History the most lame skill in the game, they don’t even include it as one of the three primary skills you can use to discover Secret Lore! And Skill Challenge for research in general doesn’t even use History as one of the skills!

The chapter also has a lot of information on puzzles, plus some information on traps and hazards, with a few samples.

REVIEW: 4TH EDITION DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE PART II

By James Treu

Chapter 6, Adventures, is pretty big and includes using published adventures, fixing problems, building an adventure, quests, mixing encounters, fleshing out the adventure setting, and putting flavor and zest in the monsters and NPCs. The Quest Cards side bar felt too much like World of Warcraft (WoW) to me though.

The encounter mix section says that fun is everything. Don’t hold players accountable. Hand waive supplies, encumbrance, getting in the city gate, etc. Well, that can be okay advice if not taken too far, but it will be. The artificial bubble feel will erode the sense of loyalty and believability.

Chapter 7, Rewards, gives solid, clear (well, except a bit for traps and hazards) instructions on xp rewards. One may not always agree, but it’s very straight forward. The part about milestones awarding action points is explicitly there to “encourage characters to take on more encounters before stopping for an extended rest.” While I agree it will help reduce excessive caution, the expenditure of daily powers and healing surges is still going to be a powerful deterrent to pressing on. Still, actions points for milestones is a laudable feature, as is the goal of reducing excessive caution and too standard play execution.

The chapter is also very clear on the awarding of treasure, including magic items. Follow the treasure parcels they set out (however you want to compose them), and you will achieve the game’s intended balanced results. Vast improvement over 3E, although you may be taken aback a bit to see it all laid out so starkly.

As to magic items, the party finds magic items 1-4 levels above their current level. You can make magic items your level or lower. There’s a lot of magic items in treasure for each level. You’ll be swimming in them, of various power, after 5 or 6 levels. By 10^th level, each character in the party will have 8 magic items, not counting any potions or ritual scrolls. Within a few levels after that, all your body slots will be filled, and you’ll start having primaries, backups, and lots of wondrous items. And remember, these are just the ones the characters FIND via treasure. It doesn’t include the ones they make. Pretty clear now why they both toned down the power of a lot of magic items AND restricted the use of the daily powers of them.

Chapter 8, Campaigns, talks about using published campaigns, or parts of them, about campaign themes, super adventures (one long adventure), campaign story, and beginning, running, and ending a campaign.

Curious wording on page 147 says paragon characters “are able to use magic rings.” Can’t everyone use magical rings?

Chapter 9 talks about the world, and assumptions of the default “points of light” setting. If you read my review of Worlds and Monsters, it’s mostly similar, but it gives other stuff too. Details on civilization, including villages, towns, cities, governments, commerce and economy, plus stuff on weather, environmental dangers, starvation, thirst, and suffocation.

There’s also interesting info on religion. For example: “A temple to Bahamut in one city is unconnected to Bahamut’s temple in the next city, with each having different rites and differently nuanced interpretations of the god’s commands.” Temples in the D&D world also don’t hold scheduled worship services. Rather, the temple is usually always open and constantly busy. Holy days just ramp this up.

It also gives a glimpse about “regular” priests. Most are ordinary people who might or might not be even ritual casters.

The rest of the chapter gives pretty miniscule stuff on the Planes and the gods (mostly the evil gods). What they didn’t make clear is why at least the evil gods wouldn’t strike down characters before they advance too far. Probably stuff for the upcoming DDG to make clearer.

The chapter also gives good and clear info on how to use artifacts in your game (without busting your campaign), and a few examples. The chapter concludes with some good info on languages and using them in the game, an improvement over 3E, where language usage often became ignored or a magic-trumped joke.

REVIEW: 4TH EDITION DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE PART III

By James Treu

Chapter 10, The DM’s Toolbox, gives some good info on customizing monsters (once you wrap your head around the magic threshold concept, which is a bit of a complication necessary because of the streamlined-and bit artificial-rules for monster and NPC generation), and monster templates (e.g. feyborn, mummy lord, vampire lord, etc.) and class templates. It also includes design steps for creating monsters and NPCs. The NPCs are usually the truncated and watered-down versions of the PC classes, and I have definite mixed feelings about them. NPCs are almost like hollow or stick figures in comparison to 3.5, and there are no pre-equipped NPCs. And no NPC classes either.

Variants like damage to specific body areas, or critical successes for skills, are either completely missing or so scant you can see a future book coming on them. The chapter finishes out with random dungeon and random encounter generation, and even playing without a DM.

Chapter 11 includes a sample town and its surrounding region, and a sample dungeon. The town is good as far as it goes, and actually gives DM tips for use in the game. The dungeon is mostly okay, until it gets to its final encounter. The drive to get a dragon (it’s Dungeons and DRAGONS after all) into the DnD sample adventure lost a little on balance. That dragon will OWN any party of the level intended. I TPK’d [1] a newbie party, even though I actually handicapped the dragon. So, the perennial problem of the past is still there in 4E: properly played monsters of certain types are extremely deadly to parties unless they are relegated to poorly executed facsimiles that “do their thing” once or twice, and then just essentially just stand there in WAY non-optimal fashion so the PCs who are supposed to win can do just that. Even some of the previous encounters are a bit off. In fact, most monsters executed as written will put a lot more wallop on PCs than what typically happens. The kobolds on average did more damage and hit more often than the party. So there’s a danger that monsters will be rarely played up to their write-ups, but only as fall toys.

The book concludes with PC and monster combat cards, and index, and a sample playmat grid.

So let’s get to some chapter-less beefs:

Nothing on age and aging. AT ALL. No rules, no guidelines, NOTHING. Just more propulsion to what can be the artificial feel of the game, which is all too easy have exist in some unbelievable video-game world where such things never come up. After all, no one asks how old your character is in WoW, do they? I can MAYBE see why they left it out of the PHB, but no way should it have been omitted from the DMG, especially since they had no “ecology” type stuff for the races in the Monster Manual (MM).

As the PHB showed, there are no familiars for wizards, and there’s nothing in here about them either (probably coming in another “Complete Arcane” supplement or something).

Stuff on intelligent magic items, cursed items, and artifacts are small, small. Yep, am sure that’ll be in a future Magic Compendium or something.

As for bright spots, I listed them in the chapters’ review already. The encounter and treasure tables and rules were very well done I thought, and really simplified and made clear a previously awkward or confusing portion of the game.

Best thing about the DMG and 4E in general:

I can now focus on the game and adventures and themes and stories and personas, without endlessly trying to adjust for or “fix” shortcomings in the rules. Or taxing my brain with rules memorization. That’s more fun for me and my players.

If you want to get more on the general design philosophy, James Wyatt (DMG author) has an “Under the Hood” article on the Wizards site.

[1] TPK = Total Party Kill

Under the Hood of the DMG

AND THEN ... TOTAL PARTY KILL.

...It was our own fault. We went up against a dozen or so kobolds, and while we were able to defeat them, they depleted all of our magical resources, and greatly weakened all of the characters save my swordsage, Zilanderan (Zil having the unique Book of Nine Swords ability to heal damage whenever he recovers maneuvers). Immediately after that fight, we found the kobold king, his bodyguards, and a kobold sorcerer. Instead of falling back to rest and recover (and knowing that a young child might be sacrificed to the kobold's god if we didn't act) we charged in.

They slaughtered us. There were a few moments when it seemed like we might pull things out, or at least escape to fight another day, but in the end they slaughtered us to a man.

The Total Party Kill is a thing of legend in gaming circles, and I've seen their merits argued endlessly on forums, blogs and podcasts. It's true that TPKs can be campaign wreckers, killing a game's momentum and breeding ill will among the players. They can also intensify the "players vs. game master" mentality of some campaigns.

That said, I also think they can be a good thing for a gaming group. The best TPKs become legends, told and re-told for years to come. In a combat heavy, stats heavy game like Dungeons & Dragons they can keep players on their toes by reminding everyone that there's a chance of failure. While it's been said that you can't lose a role-playing game, in truth, you can lose, at least in the short term, as your characters fall to the diabolic threat of kobolds from hell. A TPK brings that fact home.

I think Friday's game falls into the latter category. While I don't know if it will become a legend within our game -- our 3rd characters weren't quite established enough for us to be that attached, it was a well-run fight against a challenging foe. Sure, I would like to have one, and I'll miss running Zil, but as character deaths go, it wasn't bad.

Fortunately, this is not the end of the campaign, just the low-level "B Team". We'll be switching back to the higher-level "A Team" next week.

On a related note, D&D 4E design Mike Mearls apparently had his own run in with kobolds, which inspired the Kobold Victory Chart.

Erilar, time to role 1d20.

By Kenneth Newquist

REVIEW: WORLDS AND MONSTERS (PART 1)

By James Treu

AN OVERVIEW

Ed Stark points out that 3^rd Edition (3E) books often were rules heavy and flavor light, resembling textbooks.  They say in this edition they are trying to change that.

4^th Edition(4E) is trying to give Dungeon Masters (DMs) “ways to tell any story you want to without having to work around the rules.” (p. 53) And also “to move away from bogus parallelism” in designing monsters and places. (p. 62) As well as “making every aspect of the game more fun, playable, and more compelling.” (p. 81) To avoid “games that push back, that drive the player away from fun or interesting possibilities.” (p. 91)  No more feats with the same small or bland flavor of Dodge, for example (p. 91)   “The rules aren’t there as straitjackets, but to help you build a party that works well together.” (p.  94)

Designer Mike Mearls is aware of the pitfalls.  Here’s his insightful comments:

“1. The designers fail to see the full impact of the rules they’ve made.  A rule in isolation might look fine, but combine it with other aspects of the game and it falls apart.  It sounds find that a Player Characters (PC) who tries to stand up provokes, but it falls apart when you add in Improved Trip and spiked chains.  D&D falls victim to this all the time.”

“2. Fun loses out to some other concern.  I hate games where it’s common for one player to lose a turn.  It’s a clumsy, un-fun penalty.  At least with a negative modifier or restriction the player still gets to do something.  And the best games make (even) losing fun.”

“3. Consistency trumps common sense.  People like to throw around the word ‘elegant to describe rules, but elegance doesn’t necessarily equate with good or fun rules.  Is chess inelegant because all the pieces move in different ways?  Too often, we equate elegance with consistency.  To me, elegance is using the minimum amount of effort to achieve the maximum of fun.”  Presumably without destroying willing suspension of disbelief, as that would impact the fun as well.

THE SETTING

The new DnD “base world” is like Swords & Sorcery’s Scarred Lands setting in: 1) diminished emphasis on alignment conflict 2) primordials/gods conflict and the way the gods defeated the primordials, plus many primordials who are only dismembered or imprisoned and awaiting release or recovery by mad followers 3) reduced numbers of gods and much more focus 4) a central aspect of reincarnation 5) “points of light” in a dark world 6) focus on the heroes, not the non-hero NPCs.  Makes me feel a little vindicated for liking the Scarred Lands setting idea (even if I wasn’t always thrilled about the execution).

Key concepts (WotC calls them “conceits”)

1.. The DnD world has no real world analog, just elements of it.

2.. It’s ancient.  Lots of empires have come and gone. 

3.. There are “points of light” in a dark and mysterious world, and no one race rules the world, or really much of anything.  Most of the world is dangerous and relatively unknown wilderness, ruins, “phasing in and out” places from other dimensions, etc.  Any travel between the town and kingdoms that do exist “sticks to a small number of lightly used roads” (p. 14) (presumably used by adventurers and brave, well protected merchants). 

4.. Monsters are of course in the wilderness, but even in some civilized sections, like the griffons the dwarves ride.  The monsters all have an ecological niche and a decent backstory.

5.. Magic is not everyday, but is natural.  However, it “should never cross over into the silly or replicate modern conveniences: We don’t want ‘magitech’ such as aracane elevators and air conditioners, or flying sea serpents to put out fires.”  Minor magic might not be uncommon, “but powerful and experienced practitioners of magic are far from everyday.” (p.13)

6.. With alignment mostly gone for most people and monsters, and no spells to tell whether something is aligned or not or how it is aligned, you judge a creature by its actions or know its nature (e.g. demons are always evil).  Furthermore, if you ARE aligned good, you are an active champion for what’s right, not merely a “supporter.”

7.. Most gods are remote and detached from the world.  They might have exarchs and angels who act for them, but they aren’t usually over concerned.  The gods can be encountered, fought, and maybe even killed by epic class adventurers because they aren’t omniscient or omnipotent.  Yes, they grants spells to clerics and in some sense “hear” (and occasionally respond) to the prayers of their faithful, but since the afterlife is not a “system of divine reward and punishment,” their focus is altered. 

8.. The world has one sun, one moon, so players can easily relate to certain basics.

9.. Few to no general race attitudes between each other.  And humans are not dominant.

10.. The “Fantastic Locations” line that WotC has been putting out is going to be the norm in 4E.

11.. There is less evil fighting evil.  The blood war and other such aspects are drastically muted, as Wizards of the Coast (WotC) doesn’t “want to waste space on things players can’t use” and aren’t important or fun to the players.

There are two more concepts which are technically part of the setting, but special enough to deserve separate mention because they go to centralities of the design:

1.. Adventurers are exceptional, the “pioneers, explorers, trailblazers, thrill seekers and heroes of the D&D world.  Although some non-player characters might have a class and gain power, they not necessarily advance as the PCs do, and they exit for a different purpose.  Not everyone in the world gains levels like the PCs.  An NPC might be a veteran of many battles and still not become a 3^rd level fighter; an army of elves is largely made up of nonclassed soldiers.” (p. 13) Makes one think, great, they’re the center of attention.  But “even the members of the smallest villages, fortunately for them, have a few capable individuals and a bit of magic at their disposal. (p. 19) Yet if it’s just minor (hedge) magic, which apparently it is, no sweat.  The players get to be heroes at the center of attention, not iconic Non-Player Characters (NPCS), and that’s terrific.  What is NOT addressed is how to control powerful PCs from running amok.  If no one can touch them in power, what’s to keep them from becoming dictators or abusers of whatever area they’re in?

2.. “It is generally harder to die than in previous editions, particularly at low level” but “when a heroic tier player character dies, the player creates a new character.  A paragon PC can come back from the dead at a significant cost.  For epic tier characters, death is a speed bump.” (p. 14) And monsters and NPCs almost never come back from the dead, unless the DM has a good reason.  No more of the throat slitting/corpse burning after battle modus operandi silliness to prevent your enemies from being raised/resurrected.  You don’t read fantasy novels where people, even heroes, continually come back from the dead, so with the new parameters you can have “classic storylines revolving around the search for immortality, soul bargaining, and the quest for a lost soul.” (p. 47) It’s the DM who decides if soul is still hanging around for being contacted or brought back, and where that soul might be. (p. 47)

The setting takes the burden off DMs to keep up with both politics and metaplot.  No significant realms or political boundaries.  And with so much of the world relatively unknown between those points of light, DMs are both relieved of the burden of planning and filling in every portion of the world map, and can instead just design a few and leave the rest for later.

The animus is the third element of existence, along with the body and soul, and is the bridge between the two.  It is the “seat of animalistic desires and survival instincts” and other strong emotions. (p. 53) Most undead, even so called sentient ones, are powered by this animus, although truly special undead will retain their souls.  It’s what speak with dead” talked with in 3^rd Edition. 

REVIEW: WORLDS AND MONSTERS (PART 2)

By James Treu

THE NEW COSMOLOGY

The Great Wheel is dead.  And no more alignment-based planes.  Enough said. [1]

The “DnD world” where the adventurers begin their careers is the middle ground for whatever conflicts immortals have.  The other dimensions of existence:

1.    Shadowfell: a dark, somewhat evil in a sense, echo of the world.  It not only fuels some spells and powers, but all mortal creatures’ spirits travel there first (and in some cases forever) before moving on to some other fate (most souls DON’T go to a god’s dominion [however, see Astral Sea below], but somewhere beyond even the knowledge of the gods-and can’t then be called back to the mortal world, although reincarnation is hinted at as possible).  The Shadowfell has elements of Eberron’s cosomology in it, the old Shadow plane, a few pieces of the old Negative Material plane, and some other things.  Since shadow is a power source in 4E, and since Shadowfell energy is the power source for undead, this place will get a fair amount of emphasis.  And since it’s not out-rightly evil, good and unaligned undead are possible.  There is a race called the Shadar-Kai who are former humans that serve the immortal ruler of the Shadowfell.  They look to have the potential to be pretty cool.

2.    The Feywild: An enchanted reflection of the world, where much arcane energy resides. Lots of things live there, not just the eladrins (who are a good deal unlike the 3E eladrins).  Hags, centaurs, treants, fomorians (fey giants), unicorns, the Wild Hunt, just to name a few.  Many have a darker edge to them and none should be considered automatically friendly or “good.”

3.    The Elemental Chaos: A place of endless cycling of creation and destruction, the stuff from which the world was made.  Think of the elemental planes, but with no stark divisions.  Here were born the primordials, the shaper-creators of much of the world, and these primordials not only made places, they made beings too, like the titans (who in turn made other beings when creation energy was fresh).  Some primordials could not be slain, and are imprisoned in divinely crafted prisons, awaiting release by mad followers.  The Elemental Chaos is sometimes wild and dangerous in places, but in others, powerful beings have made bits of forest, patches of meadow, small islands, and so forth, and it is indeed survivable by mortal adventurers.  Elementals (of many new and seemingly cool types; far beyond the old bland types), efreet, djinn, salads, githzerai, and titans are example of creatures here.

4.    The Abyss.  The deepest part of the elemental chaos.  A place where evil incarnate (apparently planted by a mad and ultra-powerful god) took root in the elemental chaos and corrupted and reshaped even mighty primordials like Demogorgon, Baphomet and Orcus.  Home of creatures of pure living destruction (demons) that “the Abyss uses to destroy living things beyond its reach.” (p. 64) Lolth, the drow goddess, dwells here, but may be corrupted and driven mad by the same powerful forces that reshaped the primordials.

5.    The Astral Sea.  The gods were born here, and moved to intercede and shape creation of the world, and the beings in it, too. This enraged the primordials and a war was on, with the gods taking spheres (portfolios) of creation to champion and protect.  Slaying or defeating the primordials, they then retreated to the Astral Sea to both recover from the hardships of the war and with a realization that the differences between them could turn equally destructive if unchecked.  So they created great dominions in the Astral Sea for themselves and any of those who were like themselves.  “They left their mortal followers to pursue their own destinies with only the subtlest guidance and interference from on high.  The gods still enjoy the worship of mortals, of course, and reward it with shards of their divine power, but the days when the gods walked the earth are now far in the past-at least until another force emerges to threaten the whole of creation.” (p. 56).  Portals, not travel on the Astral Sea, are the usual ways to reach the dominions of the gods.  Lots of abandoned and dead god dominions here too, with strange magical effects, horrible guardians, and great treasures and secrets. [and now, the caveat mentioned in Shadowfell above]: An example of grand designer or lead designers not being able to keep tabs on everything.  While the Shadowfell entry says most mortal souls don’t go to the gods’ domains after death, in the Astral Sea entry it says “most mortals ascend to a god’s domain when they die.”  (p. 77) Well, which is it WotC? And do gods, like Asmodeus, “harvest and extract power from mortal souls?” (p. 77)

6.    The Far Realm. A “plane-or perhaps a space beyond the planes-that is terrifyingly remote and incomprehensible.” (p.16)  The creatures in it are beyond strange and alien.  Aberrations, in DnD terms. These aberrations sometimes leak into the DnD world, or portions of the Far Realm leak in, corrupting parts of the world. Some, like beholders, don’t even remember or care about their original place. Some, like illithids, want to control the universe.  Others, like aboleths, want to destroy it or make it like the Far Realm.  Illithids and aboleths are arch enemies.

THE GODS

The pantheon has been mixed and matched from all over DnD land and some new creative aspects added, and reshaped with the idea of filling the meaningful divine roles-and no more.  Non-adventuring elements get folded into the portfolios of gods who do have adventuring elements (e.g. Pelor got agriculture and Corellon got music). Every god “will either appeal to adventurers or inspire evil cultists to evil deeds, sometimes both.” (p. 70) Many gods of previous editions have been demoted to exarch status-“godlings in the service of more important deities.” (p. 70)

The pantheon has 20 deities (plus one). Some examples:

Correllon is the god of  the eladrins, presiding over arcane power and the Feywild.

Lolth and her twin sister Sehanine were lunar goddesses.  Sehanine is the patron of the eladrins’ worldly kinfolk, the elves, while Lolth is for the drow, who are exiled to the underark.

Asmodeus is the god of the devils.

Bahamut, king-god of the good dragons and certain paladins and others, and Tiamat, queen-goddess of the evil dragons, both of whom arose from the corpse of the original dragon god, Io.

The Chained God.  Creator of the Abyss, and chained by the other gods in a secret place known only to the gods themselves.

[1] There are five alignment categories: general Good, Lawful Good, general Evil, Chaotic Evil, and Unaligned.  Alignment doesn’t come into play anywhere remotely near what it did in 3E. There are about 20 deities total, although players can realistically choose only from 11.

REVIEW: WORLDS AND MONSTERS (PART 3)

By James Treu

MONSTERS

Encounter design was modified so that typical encounters are usually with more than one monster, and those monsters are rarely pathetic (their attack and defense ratings don’t scale so fast that they need to roll 20s to hit).  For a baseline of 5 characters of level X, the baseline encounter has four monsters of level X and often they will be monster mixes.  That is, maybe two of the same monster and two of a different monster, and those monsters have different (and often synergistic) roles to make things more difficult and fun for the PCs.

All of this tasks the resources of characters a bit more, and makes situations potentially more hairy, than a typical encounter in 3E.

“Given that the typical monster has a lifespan of 3-5 rounds, it really only needs one or two “signature” abilities in addition to its normal attacks.” (p. 86)  Encounters are therefore easier for a DM to run, and easier to gauge proper power level.  Round by round combat is faster (although playtesting supposedly shows little to no decrease in total combat time).  And Chris Perkins says “we’ve made  Attacks of Opportunity (AoOs) dirt simple by reducing the number of things that provoke AoOs and keeping the list short, intuitive, and free of exceptions. We’ve also made it so that no single players’ turn takes a lot longer than any other player’s.” (p. 86)  And with 4E giving “players better character options at every level, making DMing less of a chore, and speeding up round by round combat” and talent trees providing diversity, the fun factor is increased. (p. 87) “Making being a DM easier (and making it easier to be a good DM) is going to get more people to try running a game, and DMs will recruit players.  More players = healthier hobby.” (p. 93)

There are monster roles, largely variations of PC roles (see Races and Classes review).

And monsters of a given level are not created equal: there are elite, solo, and minion monsters.  There are even different sized versions of some monsters, the “normal” and the “mythical.’  These larger types are not only bigger, but often have a new power to make it a more challenging threat to higher level characters. (archer, orc mystic, orc bloodrager)

Some specifics:

Constructs don’t have lot of immunities in this edition.

Demons are opposed to the gods (and all their creative instincts and creations), the gods’ immortal servants, and the gods mortal worshippers.  Except for demon lords and other powerful demons, demons are birthed by the Abyss, live out short and violent lives, and are reabsorbed into it.  The “notion of demons as primordial and destructive creatures” is “reinforced more strongly in the new edition so that demons feel distinctly different from devils and other evil planar beings. “ (p. 65) Indeed, a good concept and execution!  And demons have few if any humanoid features, which further differentiates them from the humanoid like devils.  They stress offense and damage dealing, not defense or armor, and have little concern for their well-being, and become more dangerous and reckless when hurt. (p. 65) Despite their disorganization, they have the advantage of numbers, and the endless spawning and non-eradicable evil root of the Abyss means even the gods know demons can be contained but not truly eliminated.  Mechanics: demons have a handful of trademark powers but aren’t too complicated to DM.  They may even get a “variable threshold” that allows them to immediately gain resistance to damage of a chosen type, a limited number of times per day to reflect their adaptation to the destructive elemental conditions of the Chaos without granting immunity. (p. 67)

Angels are the servants of ALL gods, and take on the expression of the god they serve, but in a cold, clinical way. “Frontline warriors in the wars among the gods, and generals and champions for mortal followers.  An angel has more in common with an artificial intelligence than a true living creature.” (p.72)

Devils: Although individually weaker than the other two big D’s of the game (demons and dragons), devils are organized, will work in groups, and are intelligent, cunning, and deceitful.  Their careful planning and direction combine with the above to make them the most dangerous opponents adventurers can face. (p. 76) “Once, the devils were divine servants of the gods.  Unhappy with serving a greater power, they rebelled against their masters.  Asmodeus, ruler of all devils, led this uprising, slaying a god and stealing his divine power.” (p. 76) There’s more to the story, but it’s a good backstory.  Eventually, the gods transformed the devils’ form and cast them into the depths of the slain god’s once beautiful domain, thereby containing them. (p.76) It is hard for a devil to leave its domain, but certain rituals might do so.  And devils make pacts with evil gods and mortals, and as long as the pacts are carefully worded, stick to them.

Illithids are mostly the same, but their mind blast and dominate powers are usable just once per encounter, to make them less complex (and overwhelming) in combat.  The Underdark in general has all the creatures you’d expect, but many of the adventuring locales there are lit in some manner.

Dragons are opponents who can do a lot, even when it’s not their turn, and the older they get, the more options they get, and they’re NOT just copies of PC abilities or spells. “Each dragon has all the info you need to run it, self-contained in its stat block.  Each spread gives you tactics, descriptions, encounters, and lore for the dragon at hand.” 9p. 94)

There are new dragons (iron and adamantine), but confusing types that were too similar have been melded or put off for future monster manuals. And metallic dragons aren’t all good.  Nor are all chromatics evil.  The page space emphasis is on the “baddies” in the Monster Manual, that is, the monsters PCs will fight.  That’s why chromatic dragons are featured in Monster Manual I.  The other dragons and so forth will be in future Monster Manuals.

Giants were created by the titans and still revere the primordials and reflect an elemental nature about them. They don’t like the gods’ following races obviously.  They look a bit more supernatural than in previous editions. All giants have both Large and Huge versions.  The huge versions are the titans, and they are both more tied to the Elemental Chaos and have awesome powers to reflect it.