What 4th Edition Does Right

If you've been reading this blog, you might conclude that I'm a drama craving story fiend.  And you'd be right.  You might also conclude that 4th edition D&D is not something I would be too interested in.  That isn't true.  While D&D is more hack and slashy than I tend to prefer, there are some things that I think they did right.  And in the right hands, the rules can give a drama and conflict guy like me some fun tools to play with.

So what do I like so much?  See, I'm not much of a D&D fan these days.  Don't get me wrong, its the granddaddy of them all and the Lingua Franca of the gaming world.  I've just played so much over the years that orcs, elves, and potions of healing are old hat.  If I'm going to do something fantasy, I want to do something different.

I happen to think 4e is a poor choice for a traditional dungeon crawl.  The fights take too long to resolve, so that completing a dungeon would take ages.  However, the fights are also fun, and I like fun.  I prefer not to look at it as a dungeon crawl, multiple fights in a session game, but a system that will provide for a big dramatic fight at the climax.  If you use the DDI tools, whipping up encounters on the fly is easy as cake, which matches my style well.

There's also the dissasociated mechanics, which is a big plus in my book.  All mechanics are disassociated, its just that some games try not to admit it.  Healing surges are a great example, and are nothing more than a way to meter out hit points rather than one big pile of them.  Action points are another.  The game lends itself very well to reskinning.  Classes are all about how your character deals with combat, and its no trouble at all to change the trappings around.

I like the reduced skill list as well.  One thing I didn't care for were all the separate skills in 3.x.  Spot, Listen, AND Notice?  I need three different 'notice shit' scores?  Climb, Jump, Tumbling, and Swim?  The bad part is that 99% of the time if you made a character with one you would take them all, and keep them maxed out as well.  The changes to trained/untrained and smaller list did what all the mucking about with skill points achieved for almost all 3.x characters.

Skill Challenges are an interesting idea.  I use the Obsidian Skill Challenge alternative, which is a little more satisfactory.  They aren't fundamentally different from an extended action in success level systems, though the real innovation is stake setting.  If you do this well, this happens, or if you fail that happens.  The idea of allowing characters to use different skills on the same resolution is interesting as well, and has application in a lot of other games.

The other thing I really like is the famous Page 42.  Some have criticized the game for being too constraining, that if an action isn't a power then it isn't worth doing.  To fix this you need a strong dose of Page 42.  This page in the DMG has a chart of default damage ranges and difficulty numbers to use as a rule of thumb for thinking outside the box.  I use it liberally, and think the next time I run a 4e game I'll print out some extra action cards that say At-Will, Do Something Crazy!  See Page 42!  You want to leg sweep the goblin?  Crash through a window to surprise the guild master?  Throw your cloak over the bad guy's eyes?  We'll figure it out.

However, the game is lacking in personality definition.  This isn't something new, but universal to D&D.  When I make a D&D character, of any edition, I feel like I know very well what this character can do, but nearly no idea of who they are.  I generally use a Dread style questionnaire, each list customized to the character.  But then I've been doing that for every game I run lately that isn't a one-shot.

I'm sure someone will want to debate me in the comments, nothing brings out disagreement like different versions of D&D.  To me, I like that it has a fun tactical game and outside of that is pretty rules light and freeform.  It isn't my one and only and I don't play it that often, but they got enough things right to keep me interested in it.  I'd love a chance to play more often.