Review: Dungeons and Dragons 4e (Part Four)

Book One: The Player's Handbook
Part the Fourth: Epic Destinies

So, as a game D&D 4e is split into three different segments. In Levels 1-10, your character develops its base class. In levels 11-20, your character receives their Paragon Path, which is a powerful specialization within the base class. Levels 21-30 are about preparing for the end game, and that's where you decide your Epic Destiny. An Epic Destiny is about paving the way toward character retirement. Epic Destinies aren't based on your base class; they're based on what you want the end of your character's story to be. Does your wizard become an Archmage and start his own school of magic? Does your character join the ranks of some Pantheon or another? Does your character simply become a wanderer? That's what choosing an Epic Destiny is about. Your choice, at level 21, will guide your character toward the end of his chosen path, aiding him with powerful abilities.

As the game points out, not every player group is going to play this thing to an end point. A lot of people are going to want to just perpetually keep going, leavin their character available for high-powered adventures. And that's fine; but it's also cool that the rules allow for a certain amount of mechanical help in bringing the game to an end. I approve.

The available Epic Destinies, in the PHB at least, are:

Archmage
Deadly Trickster
Demigod
Eternal Seeker

Does that seem like a small amount to you? I kind of think so, too; but I assume this is yet another area where future volumes will allow some growth.

Part the Fifth: Skills
First, the number of skills has been scaled down quite a bit. For example, Search and Spot are now simply Perception. In general, I like how they're handling the skills. I like Passive Skill use, and I like the Knowledge skills, particularly the Monster Knowledge checks, which let you know if your character recognizes the monster, knows something about it, and possibly knows its weakness. That's a handy bit of mechanics, there. Most of this chapter is a list of the skills and what they do: that's not something I'm going to read in this particular form.

Next up will be Feats, which I'm particularly interested in as they were always my least favorite part of 3e character creation.