Product Description

The first of three core rulebooks for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game.

The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.

The Player's Handbook presents the official Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game rules as well as everything a player needs to create D&D characters worthy of song and legend: new character races, base classes, paragon paths, epic destinies, powers, more magic items, weapons, armor, and much more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9550 in Books
• Brand: Wizards of the Coast
• Published on: 2008-06-06
• Released on: 2008-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780786948673
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

4th Edition: Pulling back from the complexity of 3.5
4th edition D&D = Different.

That fact alone would have spawned endless teeth gnashing from loyalists of prior versions - but what differences are we talking about? How different is it?

In a word: very.

4th edition is a sea change in the core rules that is easily on par with the change from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition.

Start with the thematic changes:
The core races have changed. Humans, Halflings, Elves, Half-Elves and Dwarves are back - they've just been supplemented with three new races. Dragonborn (dragonmen), Eladrin (magical fey of the wood) and Tiefling (humanoids with an otherworldly taint).

Classes from 3.0 and 3.5 have been dropped from this volume (There is no druid, monk, bard, or barbarian). These classes are promised in future Player's Handbooks. Not the most auspicious beginning.

Thematic changes like this are easy to spot - but are perhaps the least important changes in the game. I dislike the concept of Dragonborn ("Dragon-anything" is a label I feel makes its subject seem cartoonish and clichéd), but as a GM - I can easily fix this. In my world Dragonborn will be lizardmen, with a backstory that I choose. I take the rules and make them my own.

The WotC game designers have clearly tried to shift the game mechanics towards customized character development: (a rules buffet, so to speak) - so anyone who wants to have a druid could achieve a reasonable facsimile of powers and rituals and achieve the rest thematically.

Many will have a problem with this - but I frankly don't. Being able to mix and match classes in 3.5 was a radical shift (and a brilliant one) and the re-thinking of that model that occurs in 4th Edition provides more options, not less.

The artwork (particularly the book's cover) will come in for a large amount of abuse - but again, this is such a minor issue. Quality artwork is important for RPG (imagery is the lifeblood of storytelling), but any one picture will have those who love it/hate it. So long as the majority of the art isn't bad (like the schlock in 2nd edition) any gamer is free to switch to pictures they *do* enjoy.

Again, thematic changes will get a lot of attention, but any GM is free to re-imagine any theme that they have a problem with.

On to Rules:

This is where the true sea change is. Any discussion of what is happening in 4th edition can be boiled down to this:

4th edition wants to simplify things and speed up your gaming sessions.

3rd edition and 3.5 attempted to create flexibility and lots of independent rulesets (feats, prestige classes). This was good - but the complexity inherent in this model caused a lot of problems. When scalable feats collided with spells and class abilities - often the only guidance the GM would have is the precise language in the rulebook. Is a charge an attack action? No, it is a full round action that allows you to attack - and so on.

I sincerely believe that 3rd edition was superior to 2nd edition, but I never had as many rules disputes when I played 2nd edition.

4th Edition was clearly intended to address this issue.

Base attack bonus tables? Gone. You get a bonus of half your level, rounded down, to pretty much anything you do (as well as to many stats, like your AC). The advantage of this is twofold - it's easy to remember and it always scales.

All attacks are now attacks: be they claw, sword or spell - the character will roll a die, add their modifiers up and try to hit a defense number. This streamlines combat spells, since instead of a saving throw, you will have a passive defense number that your opponents will try to beat. One roll, from the attacker - always.

This kind of symmetry will allow players to better remember what to do. I'm a target, I do nothing. I'm attacking, I roll.

The combat round has gotten an overhaul, as well. Characters are now allowed to perform the following in a round: A standard action, a move action, a minor action, and any number of free actions. These labels exist in a hierarchy, so the character can forgo a standard action to take an additional use of a lesser action.
Standard actions are the big actions (attack, use a power, etc). Move actions are exactly what you'd think. Minor actions include readying a weapon or maintaining a spell effect. Free actions are virtually unlimited (drop something, speak, etc).
The groupings are intuitive- and the initial adjustment aside - this structure will add some real clarity to the always problematic question of "what can I do in a round?"

Now the biggest shift of all: Powers
All 3rd edition/3.5 casters get weaker and less useful every time they cast a spell, resulting in the entire party needing to stop and camp just to get their magic back.
If the party had an early morning encounter that was intense enough - the caster would spend the rest of the day "empty" and pretty much useless.

4th edition tackles this issue head on. Character have powers that can be used once per encounter. Meaning: no matter how many encounters your spell caster has in a day, they will have something to contribute.

This is brilliant. A real slap-the-forehead moment, even for gamers who (like me) have been playing for decades. Once per encounter powers are scaled to not be show stoppers - but they scale as you get more powerful.

Powers that refresh for encounters are supplemented with powers that are refreshed after an extended rest (much like old times). The difference is that the rest need only be 6 hours long, which fits better with the model of dungeon crawls and treks in the wilderness.

Spells weren't the only resource PCs needed to hole up and replenish. The other one was Hit Points. The old healing model was: everyone gets a pittance for resting, and then the healers burn magic to *really* fix people. This system exacerbated the previous problem of spellcaster depletion. Caster rests, uses all their spell slots to heal other PCs - and is useless for the rest of the day.

Now - everyone can heal by themselves. Every PC has a healing reserve - a set number of times they can heal 1/4th their total hit points. In combat, most PCs are allowed to do this only once - magic and special abilities can increase this.

This seems weird for lots of reasons, but it will free players to pursue action instead of good places to rest. Clerics can still be healers, without being straitjacketed to the role. This is good, really good news for gamers. Parties will still have to hole up and rest, but healing reserves and encounter based powers will ensure that they will never be completely out of options.

And powers aren't just for spellcasters! This, too seems weird - but warrior types are given abilities called "Exploits." These are essentially special moves that enhance the warriors martial abilities. Call them magic or call them tricks their guild master taught them - they are expended in the same way as powers - and the advancement model ensures they will scale better than 3.5's feats.

The last big change to magic is the creation of Ritual Magic. Rituals are spells that take too long to cast in combat (10 minutes or more) but have long lasting, or purely utilitarian effects: summon mounts, scrying, etc. Moving these abilities out of the realm of combat with casting times decreases the likelihood that their effects will collide with combat rules in unforeseen ways. As a GM - I like this a lot. Players will still get creative, but when combat is ongoing - I hate to stop and figure out if a utility spell like Prestigitation can have an effect on combat.

There are many other changes:

-Three tiers of level advancement, each containing 10 levels - entering any new tier affords you new powers and development paths. Each tier contains powers scaled to that tier - no more feat free-for alls.
-Skills have been (mercifully) simplified so that there is better parity among PCs of the same level (The bonus follows the same format of 1/2 level + bonuses). You either are trained in a skill, or you are not. Training nets you a flat +5 bonus. (Gone is the insanity of 3.5 where a level loss had you searching prior versions of your character to reset your skill levels. Remember what INT drain did to skills? the horror!)

There is a lot to like here. The long suffering DMs of 3.5 will finally get some speed back into their game. It will be an adjustment, but the goals of this system are admirable.

That said, I have three gripes.
One is just a personal bias. 3rd edition required miniatures for combat in all but name. 4th edition codifies miniatures. The idea of a purely "in your head" encounter is a rapidly fading memory for gamers like me. Sometimes, you just want to do a combat on the fly, without figures and without maps. WotC has clearly come down on the side of precise tactics - and I truly wish they'd made more accommodations for DMs who don't like to map every improvised encounter site.

Second - while the 4th edition PH's index is merely lacking; its glossary is non-existent. In books of this size - a one page index is just inadequate. To be fair, the books explain any terminology as it is introduced *very* well, but any player who needs to know what a term means would have an easier time scanning a glossary than the entire rulebook.
(DnD Insider claims to have many features to simplify things - but online access has not been the hallmark of my gaming sessions. This may change - but a good, frequently-updated glossary should be available for download on their website.)

Lastly, the unpardonable yet unavoidable aspect of 4th Edition: It is so near the release of 3.5 - and has so many changes that it cannot help but spawn a 4.5 edition in the near future. I was a playtester for 4th edition, so I know they've gotten a number of kinks out of it. But there is no way playtesters and designers got it all. Like every other edition, players will find the weak spots of the new system and eventually rules will get revised.

There is such a thing as buyer's fatigue. I've bought every ruleset since the Expert Set, and having invested deeply in 3.5, I am being asked (along with every other 3.5 player) to start over - again.

I like the rules - and I obviously love the game - but there is a limit to the number of times a game can switch rulesets. If 4.5 comes out in the near future and we are yet again asked to pitch our (still like new) rulebooks in favor of the latest products - I suspect I will not be the only DM to slam on the brakes.

There, rant over.

Game on!

Streamlined, but boring
I don't mind at all that WotC has sacrificed some sacred cows to make the system more streamlined. I don't mind that you have to roll to hit with magic missile. I don't mind that you have to use miniatures, or a battlegrid. I don't mind that the game is more combat-oriented.

I do mind that the game just feels boring.

Sure, I can make a Dragonborn fighter and an Eladrin wizard. But they don't do anything spectacularly different. Except that the wizard is, for some magically unknown reason, unable to whack anything with his staff. All of the powers that they've added essentially boil down to XdY + Ability modifier damage, and if you're lucky, a 1-turn status effect.

I give great praise to WotC for making the classes blanaced. It's very difficult (if not impossible) to push your character off the RNG completely. The problem is that they made everything too balanced, so that no one does anything particularly flavorful.

Not only that, but the character you make is essentially straight-jacketed into one of the two (and sometimes three) predetermined character archetypes that are presented. Taking a power from a different character build is inefficient, because it takes a different attribute to use, which you probably don't have as high.

I don't care if my wizard impales people with ice spikes or burns them with fire, because there's functionally no difference. Defenses against particular damage types are so few and far between that you can do the same thing with the same spell, over and over again.

The elite and solo monsters that are presented are a joke. They have anywhere from 2x-5x the amount of HP a normal monster should have, and have an extra 10%-25% chance to end any effect on them every turn. Considering that combat against normal enemies takes forever, you spend all of your encounter and daily powers against the enemy, and then sit there and grind away at its massive amount of health with your piddly at-will abilities, which do precisely jack squat in the long run.

The rituals are dumb. All of them are assigned a cost. It takes 10% of your level-equivalent character wealth to detect a secret door. The rituals themselves are interesting, but I'd rather save up for the 3,000,000 gp required for a better sword (yeesh) than pay 5,000 gp every time I want to teleport.

It seems like the playtesters didn't go past about level 10. Magic items are ridiculously expensive. The higher-level encounters just don't add up with the math the designers used. And you're chokeheld to even fewer options the higher you go.

Overall, the system is great for a one-shot weekend thing. But if you want to make a long-running campaign, stick to one of the other editions.

Squandered Potential
When I first heard about 4th edition I was quite excited. I couldn't wait to get my hands on all the brand new shiny rules. I read all the updates about the new races and classes from Wizards of the Coast online, and I thought "hmmm a little bit strange that they seem to be making so many changes, but they still sound like great ideas". When the books finally came out, I bought my copies right away, and read through them. At first I was confused by the fact that the new game was COMPLETELY new. There was basically nothing left of the old editions in 4th edition. It was a totally new game. Strange, I thought, but I ignored that little voice telling me to be wary and went ahead and started up a game with some of my friends, all D&D 3.5 players who had also been waiting for the new edition to come out... all except for one friend who refused to play because he hated the new changes. I tried to explain that they weren't changes as much as it was a whole new game, but he said that was even worse. I ignored his opinions, but now in hindsight, he was absolutely correct.

As we played the game, at first we thought the game was a blast. It was fun having special "powers" as a fighter, and being able to use spells over and over again, but as the weeks progressed we started to notice some things as we reached higher levels (I think that 12th was the highest level anyone in our group reached). We weren't really enjoying the game like we did the first few times when it was still new, and 2 players started making excuses not to show up at the game, and 1 other player though he came to the game every time, constantly expressed an interest in going back to 3.5 or playing a totally different system. Essentially everyone was bored with 4th, and after having only played for about a month and a half. We'd had 3.0 and 3.5 games that had lasted years without players leaving or expressing boredom. No one was looking forward to the next game session and no one really cared about their characters. We played a few more times, but then agreed to quit and started a new 3.5 game, but we decided to use only the 3 core books of 3.5 (PHB, DMG, and MM) to see if we became as bored with it as quickly as we did with 4th. Needless to say, that game is still going (but we did allow one player to use a prestige class from complete mage).

Overall, while 4th edition seemed fun at first, we quickly realized that character building choices, such as feats and powers mattered very little in the long run. It was almost impossible to build an interesting and unique character. Even the classes bled together, despite having different powers. The only element of the characters that seemed unique was the race, but still every character of the same race seemed the same, and if "you didn't play enough different characters to know if they can be unique or not" is your counter argument, then you would be wrong as far as I'm concerned. We played 2 times a week for almost 2 months, and with 3 complete parties wiped out by assorted "balanced encounters" each of us played at least 4 characters.

Which brings me to another point that I haven't seen many people mention; the increasesd lethality of this edition. Our DM started with a module (keep of the shadowfall or something like that) and we were killed (one person escaped) by a group of kobolds. We chalked it up to inexperience with the new system, and tried to use better tactics next time. We made it through to the end of the module but were almost wiped again by the final encounter (2 people out of 5 died, but only 1 person was left actually conscious when the bad guy died). We figured that maybe the module was just designed to be a meat-grinder style adventure so the DM started planning his own game with encounters balanced according to the DMG. Two games later our party was wiped out completely (no one escaped) by an elite solo monster that was supposedly a balanced "boss" encounter for our party level. After this another player wanted to DM for a while, so we started new characters but at the same levels as our last characters. It went pretty good for a while, but then one player stopped showing up to games, for various reasons, and then some number of games after that (i think it was about 2 levels since we started over, I can't really remember) our party was TPKed again. In between the start over and the TPK 2 people had died in isolated situations but those seemed normal at the time. Even though we were TPKed the DM said that we'd "been captured" and we had to fight our way out of prison, which was kind of fun, but it felt fake and undeserved.

When 4th edition info first started to appear on the internet, there was talk of characters being "pumped up" with hit points and that this would increase early level survivability. It turns out the opposite is actually true. The characters have more HP but so do the monsters; unbelievable numbers of HP in some cases. Fights seem to drag on and on as the players swing and do minor amounts of damage to the creatures massive HP scores which are in every case but "minions" equal to or greater than the players HP scores. Minions on the other hand may seem like a good idea; monsters that can be used as a howling horde of weaklings, but die quickly. However, in practice they take the fun out of the battle. When you hit a minion it feels like a "gimme", like patting a little kid on the head and saying "good job! you hit the ball!" (straight to the firstbaseman). They all have one hit point and die from a single hit, but they feel very gratuitous, almost pointless. Not only are they simply an annoyance, but they deprive the player the fun and excitement of scoring a critical hit for maximum damage, or even of rolling for damage at all. Very disappointing.

I could go on detailing other oddities of play experience that our group encountered, but other reviews listed here have pointed them out over and over, and in greater detail than I really care to, mainly because I simply don't care anymore. 4th edition was an opportunity for WotC to fix and update the previous edition, but instead, judging by the final product, the only thing they truly ever intended to update was the company's stock price (Oooh, he made a joke about Wizards only being out to make a profit! Get him! Nerd Rage!). They created a detailed but boring board game, from which I am sure they will make quite a bit of money off of those fooled by the brand label still attached to this unrecognizable edition. I plan to recoup some of what I gave to Wizards by selling my books back to the local game store, since in just a couple of months I've had my fill of 4th edition.