Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

At least as of the sept 2013 draft, yep.

I'm looking at the Sep 2013 stuff, page 4 of "Character Creation", and it describes the two-axis system, lawful to chaos and good to evil, pointing out that this creates nine distinct alignments. Spells like "Detect Good and Evil" and "Protection from Evil" exist. The text here calls out specific categories, like "undead and fiends", as does the paladin's Smite ability, which I suppose is an attempt to address the question of how the alignment-based stuff works on humans that happen to be evil or good.

Originally Posted by Anthony

4e is actually a quite good game, seen in its own lights. It's a fun, surprisingly well-designed miniatures boardgame.

I agree. As a boardgame, it's fun.

Some of the abilities have effects that really stretch my SoD, though. For instance, the Warlord had some ability that had a side effect of allowing the player to move some other player's character. So, they move, then the Warlord comes along and tweaks their position. In an abstract way, this represents the Warlord's ability to add C&C to the party. But it felt really odd to me. There were several of these little extras tacked on to various abilities that seemed out of place.

D&Ds roots were in miniatures wargames with a bit of RPG tacked on. But it moved away from that, and created a whole new genre. D&D 4e seems to demonstrate that you can't go home again.