D&D 4th Edition: First Impressions

Since my post on the Forgotten Realms consistently gets the most traffic, there are at least some of you who might be interested in what I think now that I’ve had 4e in my hands for a few days. I was prepared to talk about this at length, and then discovered that someone (Bill Coffin, no less) had already said what I would have, and about ten times more succinctly.

As far as the Forgotten Realms goes, well, at this time I need to wait and see what the new setting book looks like. One thing that becomes abundantly clear once you read the 4e rules is how absolutely necessary it was for Wizards to apply a broad-reaching deus ex machina like the Spellplague to the setting. The Realms was, from its outset, a creature bound by the “physics” of the D&D rules…wizard spell memorization, deity-granted cleric spells, class and level advancement…all of these were accounted for and adapted to by the setting fluff over multiple editions. Many of these tropes no longer apply under the new rules, and I’m unsure if the setting’s “flavor” will remain without them now that the “physics” have been both literally and figuratively rewritten.

That’s not to say, of course, that I don’t like the new rules themselves at all; far from it. They have a nice Record of Lodoss War feel to them…that kind of basic, satisfying, high fantasy, candylike, bonecrunching feel. And I’m no stranger to that…you have only to check out the writeups for my current 3.5e Realms campaign to discover that I save my pretensions at narrative for Battletech.

In a setting specifically designed around around their own tropes (healing surges, dragonborn, ritual magic, per day/per encounter power limitations, etc.), the 4e rules would be more than acceptable. I simply remain skeptical that the 4e Realms can do this and retain their flavor.