I saw the book in another B&N today over in shitcouver and wanted to skim it, but we didn’t have time, so I picked it up.

I really like some of the ideas behind what they did – the whole Hero/Paragon/Epic leveling zones is a good  idea & play mechanic.  But somehow the features they attribute to the class & prest—err paragon classes just seem rather blah.  I can’t put my finger on it…ok I can sort of:

They made D&D into an MMO.  Or rather, they made it play much more like one..like a cross btw. an mmo & a miniature game.  The ability system & equipment “slots” feel very mmo-ish, as do labeling classes “strikers, controllers, x, & y” (forgot what x & y are).  Lots of emphasis on positioning and miniatures – an aspect of D&D I never liked – if I want to play a mini game I’ll play one bitch!!  Now get your pewterines offa my gaming table!!

But seriously…so yeah, the racial streamling and accenting looks good, as do some of the classes, but I’m left with some questions, such as:

• Why do we need a separate Warlord class?  This should be a subset of fighter somehow.
• With the changes they made to the Cleric class, why do we even have Paladins?  Clerics are basically Paladins now – they can heal, fight & turn undead…
• WHERE’S MY GODDAM MONSTER SUMMONING???  OK, they are probably in there, I’m sure I just missed them because I only skimmed the “spells”, but you’d think I would have seen a Monster Summoning I-X in there somewhere…

It looks like the game will be fun to play, provided your into minis…I was excited about it (not that I have anyone around to play with), but the focus on minis (probably so WotC can peddle more shit) really sours it for me.  You can probably still make the minis stuff optional, but so many of the feats and abilities involve pushing things around that it seems like it would be more trouble than it’s worth.

Just haul out the trusty 1st ed…wait…shit you mean I sold all my 1st ed books years ago in a fit of religiousity or something?  Sheyat!  Those things are costly on ebay.  Oh well, I wasn’t going to play anyway.  CoH/CoV & MtG (and now MtG: Online…but that’s for another post) do a nice job on my freetime as it is.