Category Archives: reviews

Welcome to the second installment in my read-through of the new Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition Player’s Handbook. This time, we’ll go through Chapter 4: Character Classes.

“Just one chapter!?!” you cry? Well, this one chapter is 125 pages long; the first three chapters combined were only 49 pages. It’s more than a third of the total book, and by far the meatiest. So buckle up, buttercup!

The classes in 4e are: cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, warlock, warlord, and wizard. The venerable barbarian, druid, monk, and bard have been jettisoned and the warlock and warlord (was: marshal) have been imported from the 3e splatbooks. The sorcerer is gone too – or really, as we’ll see later, the new wizard is a sorcerer and the old wizard is dead.

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As I read through the 4e PHB, I bring to you a play by play commentary. I’m trying to wipe what I already think I know and just take the book as it comes.

First Impressions. The layout is decent, though unexceptional – you’d think the RPG with the most money thrown at it would look the best. I am not sure I like the art style – it’s too “busy” for me, and all the characters look stiff or stilted, not natural. But for the record I didn’t really groove on the 3e “spiky partial pencil sketch” model either. So that’s a wash.

Chapter 1 – How to Play. Part of this chapter is the usual intro to roleplaying for newbies complete with the de rigeur “children’s game of make-believe” comparison. The couple interesting bits are “A Fantastic World,” where they set the stage for their “points of light” setting. I don’t really think D&D needed a default setting more hardcoded into its pages, but I reckon it’s not too hard to ignore it and swap it out. The other interesting part is in the description of the DM, where they’re careful not to say that the DM sets the rules. He builds the adventures, plays the monsters, and “referees” how to apply the rules when it’s unclear. That concerns me a little, the “DM is at the mercy of the rules” thing was previously limited to the pages of Knights of the Dinner Table.

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