Playing D&D 4E

We finally got most of the group together and played some D&D 4E on Sunday. Okay, so we made characters and fought a four-round combat with some kobolds. But it was fun.

First, it was really cool playing D&D with first level characters and having them not suck. Starting characters can now whip out some pretty impressive little tricks.

There's been some funny escalation of hit points. My kobold skirmishers had 28! But typical attacks are still dealing single dice. I was surprised that 3 PCs cleaned up three skirmishers and two slingers so easily. Well, maybe not so easily… I almost took down their fighter, and they used most of their "daily" powers, just because they could.

Taking down the fighter was interesting… it took me about a round to tie together the rules so that the effects of the kobolds' "mobbing" ability were clear. When kobolds have "combat advantage," they add an extra 1d6 damage to their base 1d8. "Hm… you guys keep fighting while I go look up this 'combat advantage' thing." Oh… flanking, among other things, grants "combat advantage". Oh, and flanking gives you a +2 to-hit bonus. Oh, and kobolds get a +1 to-hit bonus for each other kobold adjacent to the target.

One kobold attacking the fighter? +6 to-hit and 1d8 spear damage.
Three kobolds attacking the fighter? +10 to-hit and 1d8+1d6 spear damage.

The latter attracted the attention of the wizard, who used Thunder Wave to great effect, scattering the kobolds, while the dragonborn fighter successfully defended against the area attack and stood his ground. It was a very cool scene.

Of course, I find myself contrasting this with Fudge. Part of the reason I'm playing this game is to figure out what I like in rules. And for some reason, all these cool fiddly bits appeal to me. In "vanilla" Fudge, a fighter has Superb Swordfighting, and everything beyond that is just color. But in D&D 4E, he's got a handful of special abilities that he can pull out from time to time to do something a little different. And I like that there's more than just descriptive color, but actual mechanical effects that let the character be cool instead of just pretending to be cool through good description.

Now a Fudge point mechanic does some of this. Fate 3 does some of this with its Aspects. But both are just mechanical bonuses to something you already do… temporarily making Superb Swordsman into a Superb+2 Swordsman. D&D 4E's powers go a step beyond and create new effects. Sure, in the more freeform games, you can say, "I want to cut through this opponent and strike the second opponent for half damage, and force both of them back five feet." But do you? I've not played with anybody who assumes that kind of ability out of skills, even when they're expert. I think "Superb Swordsman" sometimes causes the same problem players have with Fudge when creating characters without a list of skills to pick from. Without being given clear options, players, myself included, pick what options they see in front of them.

So I'm kind of liking this. D&D 4E may be a bit more complicated than I want, ultimately, but it's going to help give me a better idea of what I do want. For a long time, I was driving towards this ideal of the smallest, most "invisible" rule-set as possible. And I was becoming rather unhappy with it, blaming my inability to play freeform, instead of blaming my choice of rules.

So I'm really looking forward to playing this game for awhile and we'll see what comes out of it.