Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook
Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook
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.
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Stars Gygax you are truly dead now…and missed
I cannot fully state my disappointment in 4e. So, let me start by giving kudos to its one, and only one, improvement. Magic has now been successfully separated into combat magic and longer more difficult (ritualized) magic. That’s it folks. The one thing I find better about 4e.
I have been a DnD player for about 18years now and I was trying hard to not sound like some crotchety old guy saying, “I remember when DnD was great…” but honestly 4e has destroyed the game.
I really enjoyed 3rd and even 3.5 editions even though the weight of material became overbearing. There were so many ways to customize one’s character that a player could go for years without playing the same one. Now however all the classes feel essentially the same in action and their powers which once were very divergent now all tend to feel the same. Honestly, is there any real difference between a cleric’s Godstrike, (weapon damage x7+strength modifier radiant damage)p.72, and a fighter’s No Mercy, (weapon damage x7+strength modifier)p.86? Now a cleric can be a fighter as well, great news everybody! It used to be that a cleric and a fighter had different roles based upon their powers and abilities. NOW the game actually has to TELL you what your role is, I can only presume because otherwise no one would know.
The powers that used to help define characters are now all PAINFULLY boring. Gone are the exciting images of a ranger with cool tracking abilities and a companion animal roaming the wilds looking for trouble before it finds him. This is now replaced with a combat machine (aka a striker) whose most interesting abilities are which kind of attack should one use, “spin around with blades outstretched,p.108″ or, “you make two attacks against a single foe.p.108″ LAME!
I could go on at length about how 4e no longer “feels,” like DnD but that would sound too much like an old gamer. However, if you are an old gamer, well, 4e doesn’t feel like DnD.
Do yourself a favor and buy some used 3e or 3.5e books and have a great time playing a CHARACTER and not a paper version of a video game.
Wizards, please, please, please come out with a 5e soon that returns to what was once great about DnD. ROLEPLAYING!
1 Stars flavorless unimaginative combat
the nuts and bolts of any role playing game is the “growth” of the character through obtaining more and more levels.
this is where the game fails drastically. In order to gain a level the character must “experience” the game world.
As combat is lacking in any diversity as each combatant rolls a 13 or better on a d20 (traditional dice have six sides so is known as a d6) and each character will do about 15 points of damage to the bad guy or the beastie, no matter what the character class is “named” or it is a sword or an arrow or a spell. So it is just roundabout and roundabout till the bad guy or beastie is out of hitpoints. Plus “utility” spells are now no longer helpful as the opportunity to spring a magically locked door spring open and possibily surprise the bad guy inside now takes 30 minutes to accomplish.
In all the worst path that could have been chosen for the future of gaming around of table with friends. It is just BORING!!!
2 Stars Really An Odd Course By the Company…
Sort of a poor game, really. Seems like someone wrote rules for playing “Diablo” or “World of Warcraft” on paper, and that’s what this is. If you are familiar with the game from previous editions, many many things have changed–multiclassing is still possible but so completely unlike previous editions it seems to make characters weaker, prestige classes sort of exist in a bastardized way but don’t really make sense any more, the classes are in some cases quite different, base races are greatly expanded in volume but not in flavor or development, many spells and spell effects are gone, the alignment system is re-hacked and made even more unintelligible than the previous set-up was, and numerous things are introduced. It is faster and easier to play, as long as you have miniatures and use them (it is essentially required now, a criticism leveled against 3/3.5 but more true now), and characters are more “similar” now. That is, a fighter is much like any other fighter, a barbarian is much like any other barbarian, etc. I have the PH2 as well, which I needed just to understand what all the core races and classes are, and it adds little to the experience. I am not sure what the company was thinking exactly when they re-wrote the system and changed it in such ways. It is frankly more silly and unrealistic than it was before, and we’re talking about a game with magic and dragons and elves. Extremely combat-oriented, seems more power-gamish, nearly every single power/feat/etc featured in each volume revolves around killing or defending in a way that adds more dice to the rolls. Little actual role-playing is supported by this new version of the game.
2 Stars VERY LIMITING!!!!
After purchasing all the core rulebooks I have to say that this edition is VERY,VERY,VERY limiting, here is a players handbook example: in the 4th edition book you can have 64 different combination’s of race and class alone, but in the 3.5 edition books you get a whopping 77 combination;s of race and class alone!
If you want this game to play with your buddies, stick with 3.5.
But if you want your children or a relatives children to get into D&D, this is the edition for them.
1 Stars A nice source for house rules in my 3.5 campaign…..not a good game at all on it’s own.
There are so many things wrong with this version that I’m tired of talking about them. Therefore I will keep it short and sweet. This game is balanced, way too balanced. All the PC’s are basically the same. Spells are gone and the powers that replace them are pathetic. Skills have been dumbed down so much it hurts my brain to look at them. Flexibility in character creation is very limited….you are pigeon holed to play certain types of characters. To be blunt, I think this attempt at a revision is a slap in the face of the true D&D fans. I sold my 4th edition PHB on ebay. My advice? Stick with 3.5, try Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder RPG or blend the 2 together.
Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons Book Reviews
