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Charles Donnell
United States
Houston
Texas
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The First in a three part series of My Two Cents reviews on the 4e D&D Players Handbooks.
Technical Stuff
Published in June 2008 by Wizards of the Coast as a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. this volume is one of the three core rulebooks along with the Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual that make up the initial line of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons (4e D&D) and not surprisingly the main focus of the book is on character generation and how to play 4e D&D from the players’ perspective. The book comes in at a respectable 319 pages of rules, artwork, and references covering everything needed to enjoy the game from the player’s perspective and then some. The books has been produced as hard cover edition with standard binding in each of its print runs and to the best of my knowledge no soft cover or electronic version has been authorized for release to date. Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt are credited as the Design Team and are given credit for multiple areas of the development with more than thirty additional contributors listed in the publication credits.
Stuff That’s Included
(pages 1-2) Title Page – Page 1 is a splash page showing the title of the book Player’s Handbook: Arcane, Divine, and Martial Heroes as well as the latest version of the Dungeons and Dragons logo and listing the Design Team of Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt. Page 2 contains a more thorough breakdown of the design and production team crediting more than thirty individuals for their various contributions to this work as well as having the expected library and cataloging information. While all of this is necessary and certainly of use to those in distribution, sales, and cataloging it is of limited use to those whose main focus is on playing and enjoying the game.
(page 3) Table of Contents – The next page contains a table of contents which is almost a must in a rulebook of this length. The table is nothing flashy, but does what it is meant to do well enough although some of items that were given specific page references seem a bit odd to me, such as including a page reference for the paragon paths for each of the classes, or omitted, such as not including a page reference for some of the more useful tables like those for the feats at each level or the one showing the listing of the rituals by level. It is not that the arrangement is bad per se, just a bit odd.
(pages 4-11) How To Play – The next eight pages are given over to a general primer on what a roleplaying game is, how to play one, and a few very basic rules that govern playing 4e D&D. The overview on what a roleplaying game is fairly mundane going over the idea that the game is played collectively with a group and that the normal concept of ‘winning’ does not really apply. This has been said so many different ways in so many sources that there is really nothing new to this part. The breakdown of things that are a little more specific to 4e D&D including the roles the participants in the game take on as either player characters or the dungeon master, the role and roll of dice in the game, an example of a game in play, and the Three Basic Rules. This last point is something I was happy to have included and codified as it clears up some, but certainly not all, of the issues that can arise during a game. Specifying the information found under Simple Rules Many Exceptions, Specific Beats General, and Always Round Down takes away a little of the uncertainty and guess work that can go into running and playing such a complex game. Of course, this does open up the door a little for rules lawyers and munchkinists, but I think what is gained by putting some specifics to these three general rules far outgains the potential for rules abuse.
(pages 12-31) Making Characters – The section on making characters covers race (a character’s species…), class (a character’s vocation…), and role (a character’s function…) in general terms, but without going into too many specifics. This is because the rules for the various races and classes are given their own sections of the rulebook which contain more details information. This section also includes the definitions for a character’s ability scores (a character’s physical and mental attributes…) with several methods for generating them, general rules for character advancement using the game’s system of levels, a brief overview of the three tiers of play (heroic, paragon, and epic…), and several short sections on roleplaying aspects of the character including the games alignment system and the default languages and gods of the games loosely defined ‘points of light’ setting.
(pages 32-49) Character Races – The details for character races are given in the next part of the book. The beginning of the information for each race includes a half page full color illustration featuring a male and female of the race being presented immediately followed by the games rules for race including any ability score bonuses, skill bonuses, extra languages, and racial powers. In general, the rules do a fair job of achieving the goal of balancing out the different races while still allow to have a unique flavor of play, but an argument can be made that some race’s come out with an advantage over others initially or that some racial powers are somewhat more powerful. What was strange to me as a long time D&D player is that races that were in previous editions Players Handbooks and generally were considered ‘core’ races such as the gnome and half-orc were not included here while races which had previously been in the second tier so to speak had been included meaning of course the dragonborn and tiefling. I’m still not convinced of any reason within the setting or game system to justify this change, but I cannot argue the popularity of these two races among players.
(pages 50-175) Character Classes – The section of the book that details character classes comes in at over a hundred pages. At first this may seem excess, but when you realize that each class is given two pages to cover the initial character generation and that the rest of the information for the class is a breakdown of the powers available to the class at each of its 30 levels it becomes a little less daunting as it can easily be digested by level as the characters advance in the game. Also included in this section is a more detailed overview of the tiers of play with heroic being the first ten levels, paragon being eleventh to twentieth level, and epic being twenty-first level and beyond. A brief explanation is also of paragon paths and epic destinies which are options available to characters once they reach the appropriate tier.
(pages 176-189) Skills – The next section of the rules covers Skills including definitions of the skills in the game, how skills can be used, the difference between trained and untrained skills, and how a skill check is made. The list of skills has been greatly reduced from previous versions of Dungeons & Dragons to a mere seventeen skills. Also, the use of skill points to increase the proficiency of skills in what amounted to a point buy system has been eliminated and now a character is either trained in a skill or not with training simply giving a +5 bonus to the skill and in some cases, such as Arcana, allowing a character some additional options in how the skill is used. Originally I was concerned about the eliminated of what I thought were key skills and the lack of customization in how a character could develop their skills, but I have really come to appreciate the simplicity of this system and how it allows for more roleplay rather than reducing things to rollplay with regard to skills.
(pages 190-209) Feats – The rules for feats have nearly twenty pages given over to them and cover how feats works – typically granting a minor or temporary bonus, allowing a character additional options, or a limited use ability of some type. A fairly large number of these are geared towards combat, but there are still quite a few that are meant for use outside of combat or have benefits there. One of the notable differences between this version of Dungeons & Dragons and previous editions is how multiclassing is handled. In this version, there is a chain of feats that allows for multiclassing effectively giving a character the option to gain some abilities from another class, but not all of the features and benefits. A character doing this also has to sacrifice the ability to chose feats that would make their character more effective in their chosen class.
(pages 210-255) Equipment – Forty-five pages seemed like a high page count for equipment at first, but when I realized this included mundane equipment such as weapons, armor, and adventuring equipment as well as all the initial magic items for the game I had to reconsider. The sections for weapons and armor are well down giving the rules that apply to them as well as providing a consolidated table showing the ‘basic’ weapons and armor available in the game in a clear and concise manner. Adventuring equipment seems to be all but overlooked having only one page devoted to it and being sorely lacking in information on much of the gear. Money and general purchases such as food and lodging are also briefly touched on, but lacking in any real detail. This part of the rules could have clearly used a few more pages to round it out. Magic items on the other hand are given the bulk of this section of the book with 33 pages and include a few defining rules that represent a big change in how they work. The biggest single change is in clearly defining the slots that magic items occupy and further going on to clarify that no two magic items can occupy the same slot at the same time. This greatly reduces the potential for abuse of magic items. Each item presented in the rules is given in a consistent format, but the amount and variety in the descriptive text is somewhat lackluster. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the items presented in this rulebook are geared towards combat either being offensive such as weapons, defensive such as armor and neck slot items, or curative in nature where in previous editions of the game magic items generally had a far greater range of powers and effects and included everything from minor useful items to unimaginably powerful artifacts and everything in-between.
(pages 256-263) Adventuring – The section on adventure tries to codify adventuring in a way that is very reminiscent of a computer roleplaying game even breaking down the structure to a quest / encounter / reward hierarchy. While this could be moderately useful ‘advice’ for a novice group it can also severely limit the way the game world is created and that the player characters interact with it reducing to something akin to the old Bard’s Tale or early gold box games. More useful in this section are rules that govern movement, particularly the rules for overland movement, vision and light sources, and rest and recovery. These rules as presented are pretty straight forward, but one thing of particular note was that unlike previous editions of the game characters do not simply regain hit points while resting they must actually spend healing surges and if they are unable to do so they cannot heal naturally. This single change has had a dramatic impact on several games that I have been involved with over the last two years.
(pages 264-295) Combat – A large part of the book is given over to the rules regarding combat. This section of the rules are well written and clear although they almost make the use of a battlegrid of some kind and miniatures mandatory (combats can be run without them, but it is significantly more challenging to do so). The level of detail given to these rules makes combats fairly easy to run, but there is a potential for a large number of variable effects and powers to be in play at any given time making the use of markers to track status effects in addition to a battlegrid and miniatures a good idea.
(pages 296-315) Rituals – The rules for rituals occupy the next twenty pages. In this edition of Dungeons & Dragons rituals largely take the place of many of the non-combat spells that existed in previous editions of the game. In fact, a number of them are direct ports of spells from previous editions. Generally, the rules for rituals, particularly the casting times, make them impractical for combat and unfortunately this causes many players to overlook their usefulness or ignore them altogether. But the fact that rituals can be performed by any character represents a huge change from previous editions of the game where many classes were simply precluded from the ability to use magic outside of that provided by their magic items.
(pages 316) Play Tester Credits – A whole page lists a huge number of playtesters for this edition of the game. I was very happy to see this included as I do not know that playtesters are given enough credit for what they bring to the development and production of game such as this, but also find myself wondering why this was not included after the production credits of the title pages.
(page 317) Index – The rules include a short summary index. Unfortunately, the included index is far too brief and does not readily identify a number of key rules points making it a less useful tool than it could have been.
(page 318-319) Character Sheet – Pages 318 and 319 have a standard Wizards of the Coast character sheet on them with permission to copy for personal use. This was a nice inclusion for those who prefer the ease of use of premade character sheets and it is the same character sheet that Wizards of the Coast made available for download as PDF file from their website.
(page 320) Advertisement – Page 320 is a single page advertisement trying to drum up business for D&D Insider, the company’s online initiative for D&D. Not being a fan of advertising within rulebooks, particularly when it is overly blatant and for products or services which have little or no value to me, I have to wonder why this page was given over to increase another section of the book such as the index.
Stuff I Liked
It is Dungeons and Dragons. (Yes, I’m an admitted fanboy…)
The consistent formatting and presentation of the information in this rulebook made for a very easy read.
The way that non-combat magic was reworked as rituals and has been opened up to all character classes.
The streamlining of the Skills system and the reduction in the total number of skills in the game.
Stuff I Have Mixed Feelings About
The apparent focus on combat seems to overwhelm the roleplaying aspects of what is presented in this rulebook at times. While I am of the opinion that the rules provide the engine for the game and do not prevent a good roleplaying game from happening I can see the validity of the argument that the rules as written provide a solid miniatures board game rather than a roleplaying game.
The transition in this version of Dungeons & Dragons to cater to a younger generation of gamers whose tastes have been heavily influenced by computer roleplaying game. Many of the aspects of the game that I enjoyed in previous editions of D&D simply seem to be lacking or missing from this version of the rules.
Stuff I Didn’t Like
The loss of the gnome and half-orc as ‘core’ races.
The lack of information provided for adventuring equipment including even some of the basic definitions of what the equipment is.
The quest / adventure / reward mechanic as outlined in the Adventuring section. It is far too programmed and limiting as presented.
The organization of the index is lacking and could have benefitted from additional page count.
The inclusion of an advertisement for D&D Insider for all the reasons stated above.
My Two Cents
Realizing that this book is several years old now, that numerous rules updates have been published, and that a more concise and up-to-date rulebook, The Rules Compendium, has been released it is hard for me to give this product the endorsement I would like to give it. For those just starting out, I would recommend getting the Rules Compendium and either the Heroes of the Fallen Lands or Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms as a starting point. But for those who want to have more options for their character build, or who want to play a class that’s not readily available in one of the Essentials books, this is still a good book to pickup. Alternately, if you are like me and generally ignore the rules updates and are not interested in Wizards of the Coast sponsored play / tournaments this is also worthwhile to acquire – at least until (if?) there is an updated version released.
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Justin Fitzgerald
United States
Black Earth
Wisconsin
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FWIW, Gnomes and Half-Orcs do appear in later player's handbooks. Agreed, however, that dropping so much content was pretty disheartening in the early days of 4E.
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Charles Donnell
United States
Houston
Texas
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KakarisMaelstrom wrote: FWIW, Gnomes and Half-Orcs do appear in later player's handbooks. Agreed, however, that dropping so much content was pretty disheartening in the early days of 4E.
I'm aware. I'm actually working on reviews of the PH2 and PH3, but haven't had a chance to finish them as real life keeps getting in the way. And, like many others, I have regularly found myself scratching my head and wondering what WotC was thinking in their editing decisions.
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