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Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition By Wizards RPG Team ( Wizards of the Coast )
Release Date: 2008-06-06
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $34.95
Price: $23.07
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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 Players 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, magic items, weapons, armor, and much more.
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 Excellent game. Makes a great Board game
The book came super fast and was a great price new, better than in the stores. I've tried 4ed at a convention and with my friends. We still aren't sold on it as a whole. It is WAY too similar to World of Warcraft.
However, it makes for a fun, Heroquest elite like board game. The book is full of errors and errata has been added on wizard's website, but that is to be expected for a first printing. Mostly just clarifications.
Enjoy everyone, it's worth giving a chance and I like that it's a chance to start over without feeling like a powergamer with 2000 books to choose from.
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 Great for 3rd edition House Rules, but not as it's own game.
Been a player of D&D since the good ol' boxed sets and the flavor and system of this new version just seems off to me. I havn't bought it but borrowed it from and read through friends versions enough to know that I won't be picking it up. Making Dragonborn and Tieflings "Core" races is simply the most blantant example what 4th edition is really about, and that is selling "Dungeons and Dragons" to the MMO generation not making it a better game!
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An Extremely Disappointing Revision ( clogar_wintermoon )
Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition seems to be an attempt to both streamline and modularize the iconic game system. The problem is, the streamlining and modularization has turned the game into something that is definitely NOT Dungeons and Dragons. A few words and names remain the same, but the game no longer plays or feels like previous editions. As others have put it, the heart and soul of the experience has been ripped out and replaced with working - but artificial - mechanisms.
"Powers" represent the biggest change to the rules. Every class has the same number of base powers per level, but the powers must be chosen from their specific class's list. Powers also fit into different categories - At Will, Encounter, Daily, and Utility. Their name implies how often they can be used ("At Will" can be used over and over again, Daily can only be used once a day, etc..). Due to the extremely limited maximum number of powers a character can know (and the fact that the character gains access to new powers after a few levels), players will find their characters losing access to old powers in order to gain new ones - a mechanism that can destroy the "feel" of the character (especially in the case of Wizards, a class used to having a diverse selection of spells to memorize). There also isn't a solid in-game reason as to why certain powers work the way they do, other than the powers were shoe-horned into the current system in an attempt at modularization (EX: the rogue can only use a Knockout strike once a day; a wizard can cast magic missile constantly).
The Player's Handbook itself is not an easy book to read. Entries and explanations are scattered throughout the text, so those attempting to learn the game system will find themselves constantly skipping back and forth in order to figure out what is going on. What would pass for a glossary in most books is split up and inserted into multiple chapters, and the index is much too incomplete to be very useful. The style of the artwork has also changed again, and will leave those that loved the more realistic paintings of second edition screaming in agony and those that enjoyed the more fanciful creations of third edition with a bad taste in their mouth.
I can not recommend buying this book to anyone, nor can I recommend this edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game. If anyone is interested in learning D&D, I suggest buying a copy of the second or third edition rules and starting from there.
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Not the D&D we remember
What a strange beast this new game is.
Hasbro has changed Dungeons and Dragons so radically as to make it unrecognizable from the D&D so many of us grew up with. Gone are the endless ways to customize a character- the proficiencies, the spell lists, the multitude of races and classes to draw on- that were the hallmark of the sometimes unwieldy AD&D of years past. Instead, Hasbro has scaled the races and classes back to an odd handful of old and new (dwarves, elves and... dragonborn?) that are primarily cosmetic, and replaced the proficiency lists and spellbooks with endless combat feats and combat powers, combat exploits and combat spells, combat, combat, combat. Yes, combat, always a major part of any D&D session, has now taken not just center stage but the whole damn opera, and once and for all overwhelmed all other aspects of the game.
This is simply too bad. Although the old system had many, many flaws, its heart was always in the right place. It was a *role-playing* system, designed to allow its players to create nearly any kind of character from their imaginations, and to lay out traits and abilities that made that character play unlike any other. In 4th Edition, players design characters that are all too similar to each other (the combat powers for each class, despite all the pages devoted to them, are actually quite limited and homogeneous), and put them through the paces of combat after combat that play out in far too similar a way. True, a bare handful of skills provide evidence that the designers at least considered the possibility of RP outside of battle, but it is clear that their inclusion was little more than an afterthought.
If the new rules were introduced as their own miniatures game without the baggage of the D&D name, this review would be more favorable. After all, the new combat system is solid, and battles play out in a generally dynamic, engaging fashion, at least for an encounter or two. But by using the Dungeons and Dragons brand, and worse, discontinuing 3.5, Hasbro forces the comparison to older incarnations. Simply put, there is far too much missing from 4th Edition for it to seem like anything other than a shadow of its former selves.
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 Pathetic. ( jet1961 )
I realize this isn't a helpful review, but the word "pathetic" is so prevalent in my mind it's taking all of my effort not to just type that word over and over and over. This is a video game on paper. Unless you are aged 8-12, avoid this product.
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