The Glade 4.0

I'm thinking about getting back into D&D but not sure which system is better to start learning. I currently play Rolemaster but it's hard finding players. I would like a system like Rolemaster with gritty combat and flexible character creation.

Which D&D offers this?

By "gritty combat", do you mean a high likelihood of violent death, or something else?

As for character creation, I understand 4e is like the Model T Ford. You can get it in any color you want, as long as it's black.

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4e is click-a-button video-game version of D&D. 3.x lets you do anything you want, any way you want. 4e may be more balanced (and therefore less work for the DM), but if you're looking for flexibility, stay away from it. I wouldn't call either of them "Gritty", although that's more up to the DM.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Gritty always struck me as more of a setting thing. If Rolemaster's your thing, you'll want to stick with 3.5 or Pathfinder over 4e.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If you want flexibility, play GURPS

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Mmmm Gurps

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

The clear answer here is Star Wars Saga Edition. Or Shadowrun.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I enjoy both 3.5 and 4th for a multitude of reasons. Both 3.5 and 4th can offer what your looking for. 3.5 having much much much more flexibility and much more grittyness. But with a few simple rule changes can make 4th gritty as well very easily, I sadly in 20 years of RPGing have never played Rolemaster one of the few I dont think I have..

3.5 was phenomenal, our group could play for hours and argue over rules for hours, the thing about 3.5, is whats in 1 book, is contradicted in another book, and each new book just trumped what was previous in other book. It was like they just wrote a bunch of **** shoved it into the printer and then errata'd it all 6 months later, then put out another book republishing the same feats/classes over again with new update's its like really?? Q/A testing at all? Do you have any or do any? Its really bad if you have 'power gamer' in your group, and make a cleric with nothing but Extend Spell Persistent spell Divine Metamagic: Persistent Spell and Extra turning and crap tons of those stupid rods that gave you 4 extra turning attempt's. Then have silly stupid cleric running around with 24 hour Divine Power/Righteous Might etc... Out meleeing the fighter with a highter attack bonus a higher strength bonus etc.

Just about anything was possible in 3rd, but its so easy to break...so very very easy. We have been running the same 3.5 campaign since it was relased, I think we are on death # like 415 but its fun, usually 1 a year we have our Epic tournament as well, DM sets a level convert your favorite character to that level and do battle in the Arena!

4th just works, there is less going through book's we have a simple rule, besides Eberron and Forgotten Realms if its in the builder print it out and you can use it. I absolutely LOVE the 4th edition Character builder, the web based once its fixed and not made to the iq of 4 I might enjoy it You can find offline versions of the builder on your favorite torrent site really great tool for just getting an idea of wht 4th is, if willing to spend $10 can sub to the D&D insider for a month which will give you access to just about everything except for the actual books.

4.0 though is not gritty at all, unless the DM is just brutal, its pretty much impossible to die in 4th. The only times we have died so far has been death trap's and when the Red Dragon drug my rogue into lava Big complaint I do have about 4th as well, is Monsters have so many fricking Hit points and do so little damage, but we also dont have a High damage striker in our group.

If you are a heavy roleplaying group, either one works, 4th is pretty hard to do with out tiles/map's mini's as everything is expressed in squares speed 5/6 6 square's, if you want tactical combat, i think 4th does a much better job of that than 3rd did, combat just flows much easier, much quicker in 4th than in 3rd.

4th is kinda best describe I think as a Table Top MMORPG, classes have roles know, Fighter/paladin/Warden/Battlemind are defender's aka Tanks, Rogue/Ranger's/Sorcerers/Warlocks/Avengers/Barbarian's/Monks are Strikers aka DPS, Wizards/Psions/Druids/Invokers are Controller's, Cleric's/Warlords/Bards/Shamans/Ardent/RunePriest are leader's aka Healer's/Buffer's. Its what they do, Wizards dont have nearly the verasatility they use to, which I think is good and bad, good because you can no longer teleport wherever you want whenever you want, same with planeshift etc.

Basically spells like Teleport, Knock, Comprehend Languages, are all rituals now, they all cost money to cast and have a minimum casting time of 10 minutes at the absolute minimum, so no more teleporting out of middle of combat, or planeshifting wherever you want.

But at the same time, Im just now getting the ability to Fly with my wizard at 17th level!! Its alot harder now, when you see a pit trap to just go ok memorizing fly, flying the party pass pit trap. which I also very much enjoy, I love coming up with crazy idea's to beat our DM's trap's and he loves his trap's! There is skill challenges now, so say for instance, there is a pit with like a 3" rail going across said pit, player A goes across pit, SKill challenge ensue's, first make a balance check (Athletics? Acrobatics? whichever skill it is) fail lose a healing surge (1/4 of your HP's thats how you heal know, spend surges and certain classes give you bonus so you heal 1/4 of your HP's + whatever bonus from said class), dont lose hp's just 1 from your surge value (Leaders get more, strikers get less) you run out of surges that's when start losing Hit points.

So it is kinda simplistic game, but I have fun every time we play. I can absolutely recommend 4th, I think I do prefer it over 3.5, just how much smoother it flow's and the fact I dont have to look in a book every 5 flipping minutes, everything I need is on my sheet, besides my 1 printout page of status effect's.

Forgotten realms was utterly annihalted with the 4th revamp, I refuse to open the book or look through it anymore, we are using our own custom world. If your a forogtten realms fan, stay out of the 4th edition faerun books.

I hope that makes sense, Im tired

I vote 2E

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

He did say "flexibility" in character design. One of my bigger complaints about earlier D&D is the lack of said flexibility. You just pick a character class (or classes) from the start and advance them. There is little-if-any build choice to make from that point.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

3.5...I've grown to really like it.

4th reminded me of Champions the one time I played it. You pretty much have super powers from the start.

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Raell Kromwell

Pathfinder or the Warhammer 40K system if you can handle space-fantasy.

I've listened to the Penny Arcade guys play 4th, and it has some upsides (encounter powers means you don't have to worry and pray as much about spell use as a wizard or cleric, though it also feels like a mana bar and going out of combat regens the bar faster).

I've played 3.5 and it generally isn't gritty. It could be, but it didn't ever have the same 'the whole universe is trying to destroy you' that gritty implies to me. Maybe having watched "True Grit" yesterday, I am thinking of a system where your rogue gets their arm cut off before the priest learns regeneration spells.

Pathfinder is a bit more deadly than 3.5 from what I've seen and also a lot of fun. While I like 3.5 and would join a 3.5 game if given the option, I'd prefer Pathfinder games over 3.5 games if they were being run the same night.

(There's also a Cthulhu-based Pathfinder module or two for levels 5-9... if you want gritty, Cthulhu-universe Pathfinder should be gritty.)

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Once, I was a ranger
Then, I was a warlock
And a mage
And a paladin
Now, I seek to be myself

There is flexibility, but it is within the person running the game and how you create your character. I feel one of the best ways to customize is based on the proficiency system and that not every monkey gets the same skills. Everyone getting the same skills tends to lead to min-maxing or to a situation where everyone seems to be similar.

But in 2E... you see a guy waiting for you and he is wearing full plate armor and carrying a two handed sword... you know he is skilled with it and not just because everyone can, and it is available.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Not true really. =) The problem lied more in the early monster manual than with 4e...the MM3 and Monster Vault takes care of that with monsters much more balanced for providing a challenge.



Gotta disagree with this too...the problem is as much with who is playing it and how as much as anything. I've seen people play 3.x as "push a button" games, and in the 4e game I run there's...

...well to sum up, there's nothing that could be done in 3e that can't be done in 4e given players/DMs of equal imagination.

4e adds a huge amount of tactical framework to the game, but doesn't really take anything away. In fact, there are systems in 4e that I think are a huge upgrade to allow more flexibility compared to earlier editions. (The Rituals thing in particular. 4e seperates combat spells from other spells so that Wizard types can make freer use of varying spells and rituals without worrying about taking up a spell slot that could be used in combat.)


First reading the changes to 4e had me REALLY leery and skeptical...but putting the time into playing and running it...I'm a big fan now. It took some time to work out the bugs, but it's my favorite edition now. (And I started with the old Metzer Red Box).



Oh and on a tangent...I just acquired some of the terrain stuff that Gary Gygax actually used to own and play with.

Doesn't 2E have fairly ridiculous stat requirements for certain classes? I remember reading somewhere that if you generate your stats by the standard method of rolling 3d6 six times, you have less than a one percent chance of being able to play a Paladin, for example.

I still say 4E is the best, 3E has catastrophic balance problems that are virtually impossible to house rule out, even for "non-munchkin" character builds. Vanilla clerics and druids are exponentially more powerful than any of the fighter classes.

Strength 12
Constitution 9
Wisdom 13
Charisma 17

were the minimum scores to be a paladin in 2e. There were several methods of stat generation in 2e, but under most of them, it was not easy to meet even just the Charisma requirement.

Shadowrun 2E

Yeah, 2E got much better with the players option books.

I usually allowed "Tell me what you want to play and I will tell you how to roll your dice."

Which usually amounted to roll 3d6 and reroll 1's, assign them how you want them. Or roll 4d6, drop the lowest and assign them how you want them.

If you told me right off the get to you wanted to be a Paladin... I would usually allow you to swap a point here or there are needed to get to your AB requirements.

Another big one... Moose was GREAT for this as a DM. "I have this story, you are going to be a main character... give me a character background and we will go from there."

That is how one of my favorite campaigns ever started.

Some people wanted to write themselves magical items of decent power, etc. Many of the group started with +2 and +3 weapons. I wanted to be a Viking Fighter/Priest of Myself (I figured this would be neat to grant myself 1st and 2nd level magics) with a Family Heirloom weapon of Green Steel (Baatorian Steel, natural +2 for DR, but no actual magical to hit and damage)... next thing I know I have a minor artifact which is a Green Steel Bastard Sword with the Soul of a Balor and Solar Trapped inside of it, and all of my magic was powered with my blood.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like 3.5 is what I am looking for. I should be able to find used copies cheap. Plus I want to use eberron setting

I generally get an "I don't like this" vibe from Eberron, but there's this tiny part of me that's always wanted to try it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I can see how eberron could get out of hand with the artificers. I do like that eberron isn't a typical high fantasy setting.

It also has a certain "anime" feel to it, for lack of a better word. I had some of the same hangups over Exalted until I began thinking of it in terms of Jade Empire-style generic Chinese mythology rather than anime.

Oh yeah...if you want a mainstream RPG which isn't a typical high fantasy setting, White Wolf's Exalted is worth a look, too.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Exalted is horrible. Scion, on the other hand...

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

*cough*demonthefallen*cough*
*cough*vampirethedarkages*cough*

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut