So, a friend let me have a look at his advance copy of Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition, and I'm reading through the core books. Here are my thoughts on them, in real time.
Book One: The Player's Guide
Part the First: Character Generation
1. By default, Attributes are no longer generated randomly. Random generation remains an option, but the default is assigning each attribute one number in a spread between 10 and 16 (with the number 15 being conspicuously absent). (A third option allows for a slightly more complicated point-buy system, where all the attributes start at 10 (save for one which starts at 8), and each point you buy increases the cost for the next point in that attribute, a la White Wolf.)
2. Alignments have been overhauled, to the point where even choosing an alignment at all is optional. This is long overdue. "Chaotic Good" and "Lawful Evil" have been replaced with simply "Good" and "Evil", while "Lawful Good" and "Chaotic Evil" seem to be specializations of the other two. While it might be a little confusing, and a little asymmetrical (sorry, Planescape!), Lawful Evil especially (and to some extent Chaotic Good) always seemed to exist just to balance out the cosmology. Also, neutral alignments (Neutral good, neutral evil, and lawful, true, and chaotic neutral) are gone and done.
3. There is still going to be a heck of a lot of math in this game; that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just an observation. The main part of the game strategy is still going to be working out the special-case rule exceptions that your character's powers grant you. That's what ends up making the game line collectible, and it's what eventually turned me off to D&D 3.5e -- because it means a lot of rule-exception hunting, and a deep familiarity with the exceptions available; for which I don't really have time or patience. Whatever improvements the new edition has, (and so far I'm liking all the changes I've seen), the handling of the fiddly bits and exceptions will make or break this system for me.
4. Gaining hit points at character advancement is no longer random, either. Not that anyone really used the random rules from the previous editions of the game anyway.
5. PHB characters now go to level 30 instead of 20. This is basically making the amp go to eleven.
6. Retraining means that if you don't like something you chose for your character previously (a feat or a power or whatever) you can retrain and change one feat or power per character advancement. This is good: it means you don't need to plan your character's future quite so carefully and in detail as in previous editions, where I always seemed to know what I thought was cool *now*, but maybe didn't know what prerequisites I would need to get the cool stuff I wanted *later*.
7. There are a lot of fiddly bit-type stuff listed here that I don't understand yet: Paragon and Epic destinies? What's the difference between a Power and a Feat? Hopefully these are all differentiations to make it easier to keep track of things, and not extra stuff that I'm going to have to keep track of in addition to all the stuff in 3e.
8. Oh wow. Those class-specific character advancement tables are out, replaced by a single universal table. Heck yes. Simplify, simplify!
Next: Impressions of Character Races
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