25 Years Ago...

Okay, so this chapter rounds out the character details; equipment comes next, so this is the character's alignment, religion, vital statistics, looks, personality and background. Then you get to go shopping for stuff to beat monsters up with. So, we start with the alignment. This is unchanged from prior editions; it's the nine-point alignment system with law-neutral-chaos and good-neutral-evil axes. There is a chart that shows the alignment tendencies of the classes and different creatures that will be appearing in the Monster Manual in a couple of months. Some of them are marked in italics , which means that they are always of that alignment; there's no option to change it. For example, demons are always chaotic evil no matter what. unicorns are always chaotic good, and animals of any sort are always neutral. Interestingly, half-elves and half-orcs both have a tendency to being chaotic neutral. I'm not sure why they put humans at 'neutral', since humans have t...

  We are now moving on to the biggest addition to the Dungeons & Dragons game : Feats. There have been teases about how feats work in the Countdown articles, but now we get the details. So, a feat is 'a special feature that either gives your character a new capability or improves one he or she already has.' Every character gets one feat at 1st level; some classes get an additional feat automatically, fighters get a bonus feat, and humans get an extra feat just because. So a 1st-level human fighter would start with three feats, which is pretty sweet. Feats are divided into a few categories: Item Creation, Metamagic, Special, and General. Item Creation refers to making different magic items, and you can get these feats much earlier than you could make magic items in earlier editions. Scribe Scroll, for example, is available to starting characters (and wizards get it as a bonus feat). So, your cleric could start scribing cure light wounds  scrolls right off the bat. That's...

Chapter Four is all about skills. They used to be called 'nonweapon proficiencies', which is an awkward name to say the least, and they were optional (although in 2e they were pretty much ubiquitous, especially when kits came along). In 3rd edition, they aren't optional; they're integral. Every class gets a certain number of skill points per level, and add their Intelligence bonus to that number. At first level, they multiply that total by four to get their final total. These can be distributed however the character wants; one point per skill is permitted, which will give the character a broad range of skills but not much of a chance to succeed. You can put up to four points per skill at 1st level if you prefer, so that you're better at fewer things. Most examples I've seen, such as the starting packages, assume the maximum points per skill. Success is based on a d20 roll plus their number of ranks in a skill, plus their ability modifier, plus any other modifier...

Today, we will talk about character classes. There are a few things to note right off the bat: First, there are no 'subclasses' anymore; barbarians are not connected with fighters, and druids are a separate beast from clerics. So, all classes are just that: Classes. No subclasses. It's not a big deal, just something I noticed real quick. The second thing I noticed is that standardization is the core of this game. They are standardizing a LOT of stuff here. The most noticeable one thus far is that all eleven classes use the exact same experience point table. It doesn't matter if you're a wizard, a fighter, a monk or a rogue, you're using the same XP requirements for every class. And every class gets a feat every 3rd level. And an ability score increase every 4th level. I'm not sure I like this very much. One of the things I've heard a lot about 3rd edition (and other variants of it, such as Pathfinder and 5th edition D&D ) is that there is an issue w...

Okay, so now that we know how 3e ability scores work, it's time to take a look at the core races. I'll do a quick overview of each race, then add my thoughts at the end. The two main things to note about the different races is that most of them modify the ability scores in some way, and every race has a favored class that makes them immune to the multiclassing XP penalty. They also have certain languages that are common to their race. The seven core races are the same ones from the original Players Handbook  in 1978: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, and Halfling. Half-orcs are making their official return, having been banished from 2nd edition. Humans are the baseline, of course; they have no racial ability score adjustments, and any class can be their favored class. So, if you're a human, you can add a single multiclass level to your primary class without worrying about XP penalties regardless of your primary class. That's a nifty trait right there, if you...

Well, we have at last arrived. 25 years ago to the day, the 3e Player's Handbook  was released. I'm not going to cover the whole book in a single post; that would be insane. But I will take it a chapter at a time, possibly two chapters at once depending on how short they are. But first, there are a few things that dropped on the same day on the WotC website: The first installments of the 'Map-a-Week' feature. There were three of them: A legend , and two maps, Village 1 and Village 2 . Here they are, in miniature: They also released a  Conversion Manual  to translate characters from 2nd edition to 3rd edition. I'm not going to review this; it just explains how to convert characters, magic items, and monsters over, so it's pretty straightforward. Alright, now on to the main event. First of all, the new Player's Handbook  is very, very dense. Small type, close spacing, and 286 pages (plus a special section at the end which I will discuss when I get there). It ...

Alright, this is the last month of the countdown before we get to the release of the Player's Handbook . Our online character spotlight is  Imsh, the Half-Orc Barbarian . And this is a very interesting character, because while we have 1st, 3rd and 7th-level versions of this character, he is our first example of how multi-classing works in 3rd edition. So, he's really strong (17 at 1st level), and really ugly (Charisma of 6) and dumb (Intelligence of 8). He's fast, has lots of hit points, and likes to use a really big axe. What is it with axes in this edition? I've hardly seen any swords in the artwork so far. Half-orcs get darkvision like dwarves do; the other special abilities seem to be barbarian-related (rage and fast movement). At 3rd level, we now have a multiclassed Barbarian 2/Rogue 1 character, so he still has his barbarian abilities but also the abilities of a 1st-level rogue, including his skills. He's added three skills (Move Silently, Spot, and Search), ...