This review has been a long time coming, but I really wanted to get a feel for the new edition before I commited to a review. Having finally made my way through "Keep on the Shadowfell", I've decided I was ready. This review will cover 4e as a whole, that is, the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual. Here we go.
I was really looking forward to the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, often abreviated as "4e". By the time of its announcement, I hadn't played the third edition in ages. Don't get me wrong, though. D&D 3e was an amazing step forward in quality game design. I greatly enjoyed it for several years, but eventually the game became less fun to actually play (and run), at least if you were paying attention to the rules. So with the announcement of 4e, I was greatly anticipating enjoying D&D again.
So, starting where things start, the Player's Handbook (PHB) features the familiar races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf and Halfling), but also newer entries like the Eladrin (ie "high elf"), the Tiefling (descendents of cursed humans), and Dragonborn (dragonmen). Things are about what you'd expect, except that there are no negative stat penalties for choosing a race, and some of the abilities that might be considered a standard part of the race require feats to actually get.
The PHB offers the classic four classes (Fighter, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric) and the well-known Paladin and Ranger, but also includes two new classes, the Warlock and the Warlord. The Warlock gains magical power through vaguely defined "pacts" with otherworldly entities and the Warlord rallies, organizes and optimizes his other party-members. 4e is very class focused, and while it's possible to "dabble" in another (and only one other) class, it will never overshadow your core class. This is important, because your base class defines your character's "role" in combat, that is, what he's best at (in combat). There's some wiggle-room, and there will likely be more as more options are made available in the future, but by design your class will never be "bad" at performing its role, and thus will always be adequately prepared to aid allies, protect allies, manipulate battlefield conditions, or put the hurt on the enemy, as dictated by the class's role.
How the characters get things done in combat is by the use of "powers". These are abilities that the character can use (usually in combat). They are described in the book similar to how a spell might be; range, requirements, area, target(s), damage and special effects. While all classes follow the same progression of available powers, they are differentiated by the types of powers available. Fighter powers, for instance, focus on protecting allies, while Rogue powers focus on getting past defenders to cause serious damage and Wizard powers deal with area effects and battlefield control. There's some overlap, of course, but the bulk of the powers focus on thier role.
Characters get "At-Will" powers that they can use every round, "Encounter" powers that they can use once per encounter, and "Daily" powers that they can use once per day. While this isn't a problem for magic-using classes, some people get bent out of shape trying to reconcile a non-magical daily ability. "Why can't I use Brutal Attack again today? Did I forget how?" The short answer is, "It's a game, relax". The long answer is, "It's a game, relax. Every single dip, rise, breeze, motion, feature and bit of debris on the battlefield aren't represented. These martial powers (thusly called "exploits") are opportunities that arise in the fuzzy margins of the imaginary combat."
Anyway, so the "fighty" classes now have more special things they can do, but the "casty" classes now have less than they had in the past, because everybody has about the same amount. Many of the casters' "spells" are now "rituals" that take to long to cast in combat, and aren't relegated to only spellcasters. So anybody with the Ritual Caster feat and the proper ritual can cast "Knock".
At 11th level, the characters get to choose a "Paragon Path" to overlay on their base class. This basically adds more "focus" to the character's abilities. For instance, while anybody can wield two daggers in combat, and with the right feats gain some benefit from them, the "Daggermaster" Paragon Path can do even more with them.
At 21st level, the character embraces an "Epic Destiny", and recieves abilities related to a greater goal and eventual fate of the character which will remove him from the game for better or worse. The Archmage Epic Destiny, for instance, has the Wizard leave the mortal realm to join with the very stuff of magic at 30th level.
Skills have been condensed and you're either trained in them or you aren't, no skill points. The skills do go up automatically as you level, though, and you can take feats to train or specialize in skills that you don't start with.
On to the Monster Manual. The monsters of 4e are no longer built like PCs. They have their own sets of numbers and abilities that allow them to do their job, which is to challenge the PCs. Monsters have roles as well, to help the DM play them well. They also have a few categories of "power" beyond mere level. For instance, "Minions" go down with one hit, though they are just as skilled and damaging as a normal monster. There are the standard monsters, of course, and there are also "Elite" monsters, designed to challenge more than one character at a time, and "Solo" monsters, designed to provide a challenge for the whole party at once.
The instructions for encounter balance and the way hit points are determined for PCs as well as monsters means that fights tend to last a few rounds (without dragging on either, as a rule). The simplicity and flow of the new monster stats makes running monsters as a DM pretty fun, and you don't usually have to worry about having to "go easy" on the PCs. It really allows you to enjoy "playing" the combat as much as the players do.
The Dungeon Master's Guide is now more than just a bunch of charts and a place to put stuff that didn't fit in the PHB. There is some really solid advice in there. It also has a system for diseases, guides for creating or customizing your own monsters, a quick and balance method of treasure distribution ("treasure parcels"),codified rules for "quest XP" and information on "Skill Challenges", which are sort of like non-combat combat. Essentially they're extended skill tests that everyone in the party can participate in. It boils down to X successes before 3 failures, though there are complications and permutations that can make it more interactive. I personally saw the Skill Challenge system as one of the highlights of the new system. Unfortunately there were some serious issues with the math. It made me terribly sad. The official errata has solved that for the most part, but it's still disheartening and Skill Challenges aren't intuitive nor quick to put together. I can throw down some monsters, draw a map with some terrain, check the point balance and have a decent fight, but a Skill Challenge isn't as easy to do on the fly. Sure, you can just wing it, but then it risks becoming just a series of the same skill roll, possibly by the same PC, over and over until it's over. Skill Challenges still have potential, but they're seriously in need of some modularization so that the DM can pick the pieces he needs and throw them together when he needs them. Until then, there's more art to it than science.
Overall, D&D 4e is much more about the "game", the "challenge". "Story" and "Roleplaying" are given a few tools, but the focus in on combat. That's not to say that combat has to be the focus of the games when you play (especially since Skill Challenges earn XP), but let's face it, combat is what D&D does, and always has done, best. A D&D game without combat practically isn't D&D at all. To that end, the D&D combat game is very good. Every fight is challenging, and the players have a variety of options for dealing with changing battlefield circumstances. Still, that doesn't really excuse how much of a combat-heavy dungeon crawl the introductory module, "Keep on the Shadowfell", is. A player running through that is rightly going to come away from it thinking that 4e is just "D&D Minis Plus". A good DM can make a difference, of course, but played straight "out of the box", KotS is very combat heavy with very little else.
So, in my opinion D&D 4e is a very well-designed game with a few exceptions *cough*skillchallenges*cough*. It makes combat the smooth-running awesome-machine that it needs to be, and it certainly doesn't handle "story" or "roleplaying" any worse. Besides, many gamers think that rules for combat are all you really need, and that "story" and "roleplaying" are entirely up to the DM and players anyway.
Final word: For what it is, I like it.
"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos
"I genuinely think that some people measure their free will by reading how unhappy their GM is." - TonyLB
[dice type=fudge]3dF[/dice]