With today/yesterday/apparently over a week ago for some guy in Canada. The Adventurer’s Vault was released, hopefully providing a nice supplement to the lack of magical items and various adventuring gear that 4th Edition so desperately needs.

You know what really grinds my gears? Being a geek all of the sudden having something to do with being cool. Sure, Bill Gates is a filthy rich geek, but we are only considered geeks (dorks/nerds/etc) because we weren’t really comfortable with many things considered ‘cool’ by mainstream society. We were usually smarter than the average person – whether that translated into good grades in math, building computers, reading tons of books, or some other outlet. We might not have been given swirlies or shoved in lockers, but the things we really liked doing were not meant for the world to know.

*Hands you a torch*
The room begins to fill with a strange and eerie mist. As you notice the walls have a slimy texture to them as you attempt to peer down the long, dark, corridor. Off in the distance you hear the breathing of a large creature. With the magical book in your hand, you begin reading to get a better understanding of what you are about to face…

Much like the Dungeon Master guide I did, I’m going to go through the chapters with you. I won’t give you all the information in it (you know… so wizards doesn’t try to eat me) but enough so they are happy with me if you go buy their product. So, grab that d20 and lets do it!

So this will be my second to last D&D post for a while. I have one more I want to do tomorrow and cover the Player Hand Book. I don’t plan on covering ever single page, just some of the highlights that I enjoy, or dislike about this book.

I’m just going to cut to the jump, so click below to read the rest.

After some fearful issues with my region being put into a state of emergency over the weekend due to some major floods, I began to fear the UPS truck with my books were swept away. Thankfully came home today to find my amazon box sitting there next to my door. Let the D&D 4.0 begin!

I can say this much, so far I’m not a fan of the new Wizard class. The more I look at it, the more I dislike it. Everything else seems to be pretty good. Give me a day or two and I’ll be able to write a little better post. I’ll try to break down the new PHB and the DM book.

With one more day to go till Dungeon and Dragons 4.0 is officially released, lets look at what ever adventurer cares about, Money, Loot, and the very dungeon themselves that stand in your way to greatness!

Economy/Rewards:

This is probably one of the few things I’ve read so far, that I hope I’m not reading correctly because so far, I don’t like the way it sounds.
From what I’ve gone through, it sounds like before you even really get started, and you’re on your way to the next level (for the sake of exampling, we’ll say we are level 5 working on 6) that all of our rewards are already predetermined before we ever get there. Sure we may not know it as players, but even from the Dungeon Masters stand point, one of the joys about reward is the randomness of it. Some might be under par, some may be your big score!

So every new version, brings new changes, and 4.0 is not without its. One of the first things I noticed when looking over the new 4.0 rules was the change in character development. If you are familiar with 3.# rules, then you know there was a period in your characters leveling that was the sweet spot. These were the levels before that your guy seemed out of place and not as much use as another players. Then the levels where you start to hit your stride. Then after those levels your character got back to the same old, no major progression, but your still playing in hopes of fun treasure. Well once again, they are trying to fix that issue, with the release of tiers for your level advancement.

One of the bigger changes they are attempting to do in 4.0 is the way you and your magic items co-exist. I was exposed to D&D when 3.0 came out, so I can’t recall exactly how magical gear was worked into your character. But I do know how it was treated in 3.#, and the one downside, the more magical items you had, the better you were then another person, or even some NPC’s. Magical gear is what gave you your edge in combat, and this is sort of a theme they are trying to direct away from.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love magical items as much as the next dungeon crawler, and it always feels good when you have that long sought after magical weapon, clutched in your players hand, ready to creep around a corner to defeat that blasted troll.

Here we sit, a week away from the release of the brand new Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 core rule books. For the past month, I’ve been doing my best to keep up with some of the information they have been slowly leaking out.

For any of you that haven’t bothered to read up on it, or just now hearing about it. Through this week I plan on going over some of the different parts (That I know at least) about the new set. For today, I shall mention a little about their online integration they will have with 4.0