Review: Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition

There's a lot of commentary, and more than a few reviews, floating around the Internet about the new edition of D&D. This review is based on over 20 hours of playing and DMing the latest edition of the game at GenCon 2000.

Let's answer the obvious question right up front: Did I like it? Heck yeah! I ran roughly 16 straight hours worth of Third Edition games on Friday at GenCon, lost my voice most of Saturday because of that, and still had a completely rockin' time with the game. When I used to play Second Edition, I always kept my First Edition books handy, especially the DMG. With Third Edition, I can safely store away my old rulebooks. Third Edition is light years ahead of earlier incarnations of D&D.

This review does not focus on detailing the all of the new rules and options in third edition, though there are plenty of those. Instead, it touches on my experiences running the game and how it compares to earlier editions and other games.

Some key points concerning playing Third Edition:

• It still feels like D&D. Most of the classic D&D terms, such as hit points, armor class, fire and forget magic, and alignments, are incorporated into the game. In my experience, keeping these terms around made teaching first and second edition players much easier. The transition to the new rules was rather painless.
• The single, core mechanic is flexible and simple. Action resolution is based on either opposed on unopposed d20 rolls, with unopposed rolls made against a static Difficulty Class (D&D's name for a target number) or the result of another character's roll. Most rolls are d20 + stat modifiers + skill bonus. And last but not least, a high roll is ALWAYS a good roll. That one change alone makes this version of D&D a much easier game to play and DM. It was a mild relief to no longer puzzle over whether a player wanted a 1 or a 20 on his attack/saving throw/proficiency/etc die roll. My Third Edition games are the first ones in my 20 years of playing D&D in which no one ever asked "Do I want to roll high or low?"
• Most players had a hard time remembering to incorporate completely new rules into the game. For example, when using a skill players have the option to take 10 or take 20. Essentially, a character can take a very long time to carefully use a skill, taking either 10 minutes or 20 minutes respectively, in exchange for automatically receiving a 10 or 20 die roll result. This sped up play immeasurably and helped keep the game flowing, especially when players wanted to thoroughly search a dungeon room. Rather than waste time with multitudes of secret door and find trap rolls, players can now just take 20, add their skill and stat modifiers for their final result, and thoroughly search the room. It's little innovations and improvements like taking 10 or 20 that improve game play. However, you may want to take care to point out these options to players and remind them of them at any point in the game where they may be useful. I found that after reminding players that they can take 20 once or twice and explaining the rule to them, they quickly picked it up and made use of it.
• Combat is much faster and more tactically interesting. Rolling once for initiative and establishing a clear sequence of actions for combat is a big improvement over previous editions. As with the rules in general, most players ignored a lot of the new options, such as bull rushes, charging, and disarm attacks, out of ignorance. I made an effort to point out situations where these options were useful and even created a small cheat sheet for my own reference to ensure that the monsters made full use of the new options, too. The biggest rule changes concern how to-hit rolls work, and attacks of opportunity. Attacks work much like skill checks or other die rolls: Roll a d20, add bonuses and penalties, and compare the result to the target's Armor Class. If the die roll is equal to or greater than the AC, the attack is a hit. Armor class now improves as it increases, which cleans up yet another one of those annoying little flaws in D&D.
  
  Attacks of opportunity are a whole new can of worms. Each combatant exerts a threatened area around himself. Anyone entering this area and then performing certain actions, such as casting a spell or loading a crossbow, may provoke an attack of opportunity. In my experience, attacks of opportunity seem complicated, as there are many different actions that may provoke them and several exceptions and general rules layered on top of these guidelines, but in practice the rules work quickly and efficiently. The best part of them is that they encourage players to think tactically and reward teamwork and planning in combat. Players now have the option to go for an advantage in combat at the risk of taking an attack of opportunity or enduring a penalty to their attacks. The options and maneuvers presented spice up combat without overburdening it with minutia.
• The classes are well balanced. Rogues (the new name for the thief class) are no longer everyone's whipping boys. Rogues have access to more skills than any other class, and their new class abilities make them much more useful in combat. Barbarians can enter a rage which makes them deadly for very short bursts, plus they have access to more skills than fighters do. Fighters are now (finally) the truly best class for wading into combat. Sorcerers (who choose their spells on the fly) and wizards (who must still memorize spells) strike a nice balance between improvisation and preparation. Clerics have spell lists that make sense and are no longer obnoxiously overpowered (though we'll see what the Forgotten Realms book does about that....) Bards, monks, rangers, druids and paladins all sacrifice flexibility for cool powers. I noticed that no one character class dominated the action at any point in the game. With the new skill system, the classes are much more flexible.
• The book is a joy to use as a reference manual. Class abilities and skill descriptions are thoughtfully laid out and very easy to reference during games. Rather than dig through paragraphs of fluff searching for an important rule-related sentence, I could find what I needed and get on with running the game.
• Improvisation, especially with game mechanics, is much easier with Third Edition. As a WotC designer explained it during the RPGA's DM Boot Camp, if something helps a skill check, give +2 on the die roll. If it hurts, give a -2 modifier. It really is that easy. Assigning difficulty classes is simple, too. Overall, Third Edition's rules work like tools that help DMs run the game, rather than hurdles that DMs have to wrestle with. I'm big on improvisation and creating rules on the fly. While running previous D&D editions, I often found myself ignoring the rules and coming up with my own guidelines. With Third Edition, I find myself working within the system and getting the exact results I want. That, to me, is the sign of a quality rules set.

Third Edition feels like a game that was meant to be played. Someone finally sat down with Second Edition and eliminated or changed all the annoying little things, such as the roll high v. roll low headaches. The game is faster, easier, and much more smooth. This is a game that was designed for maximum playability. It isn't the most realistic game out there, nor is it the most cutting edge. But it is the most useful game on the market, the easiest set of rules to work with that I've run across in my gaming career. Third Edition is a tremendous step forward that finally puts the D&D rules on equal, if not superior, footing with any other game on the market. The level of thought and intense playtesting efforts that went into the game shine through on every page. For once, a product has managed to live up to the hype. And considering the unparalleled hype and excitement that Third Edition generated, that's a pretty big statement.