The Waterdhavian Unusuals & 4th Edition D&D

Yesterday we had our third and final (for now) session in the Waterdhavian Unusuals campaign which used 4th Edition D&D rules. The campaign was a fun, back-to-basics adventure (the last two sessions were pure dungeon crawl) and I think it was a great way to blow off some steam between the more serious Star Wars campaign. One of the party members got pounded into a thin paste by a massive zombie-troll sort of thing, but otherwise we emerged victorious and saved the damsel in distress (who was a 60ish befuddled guy tied to a sacrificial altar). I think I did okay role-playing Abu Joral, but the campaign turned out to be a little more lighthearted (probably more due to the players than the design) than I expected and I didn't want him to be too much of a stick-in-the-mud.

It was interesting to try out D&D 4th edition. A lot of the elements are similar to 3.0 and 3.5, including the core d20 mechanic, which is a system I always really liked. Wizards of the Coast makes available for free download a character builder which makes character creation and levelling up a snap--it incorporates everything from every book published and I wish they would do the same thing for Star Wars.

The biggest change I found is combat: although every character can do a regular, old-fashioned attack, each character also has at least a handful of other attack options that might give you a bonus to attack or damage, allow you to move an extra square, try and knock someone down, etc. These different types of attacks vary in how often they can be used: "At-Will" (once per round), "Encounter" (once during combat against a particular group of enemies), or "Daily" (self-explanatory). No two classes have the same selection of attack options, and characters learn more as they go up in level. When you print off your characters from the character builder program, it prints off the attack options as little cards that you cut out until you have a deck. I think the main problem I found, at least at a table where everyone was new to the system, is that there's a lot of time spent watching players flip through their cards every round to decide what to do next. It slows things down a bit, and the different attack options don't really have enough flavor to make a cinematic addition to the game (except for spellcasters). That being said, the system is certainly playable and probably something people would get better and faster at over time.