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Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition | 
| Author: Wizards Rpg Team
Brand: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $104.95
Buy New: $66.12
You Save: $38.83 (37%)
New (26) Used (8) from $55.62
Rating:  153 reviews
Sales Rank: 626
Format: Box Set
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 4th
Pages: 832
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6.9
Dimensions (in): 11.6 x 8.7 x 2.4
ISBN: 0786950633
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9780786950638
ASIN: 0786950633
Publication Date: June 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
All three 4th Edition core rulebooks in one handsome slipcase. The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.This gift set features a handsome slipcase containing all three of the 4th Edition D&D Roleplaying Game core rulebooks: the Players Handbook rulebook (320 pages), the Monster Manual rulebook (288 pages), and the Dungeon Masters Guide rulebook (224 pages).
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| Customer Reviews: Read 148 more reviews...
 A new generation of a classic game June 6, 2008
P. Gatcomb (Connecticut, USA)
130 out of 172 found this review helpful
At first I was a bit skeptical about this new edition after reading a lot of the material coming from the forums and seasoned veterans of table top RPGs, but when I picked it up and tried it out for myself, I was pleasantly surprised. A lot of the fears people had about the game being over the top action is somewhat unfounded, if anything its quite the opposite.
I whipped up a quick adventure about a mind flayer controlling town politics and went at it. The first thing I noticed was that the players spent much less time looking up modifiers and rolling dice then they did interacting with the game world. With the skills being simplified a bit, it made the game so much easier to get to the bottom of things and actually, dare I say it, role-play. I threw in a complex skill challenge and was impressed out how smooth and excited the players were just interacting with the local thieves guild, which is something I havent seen in awhile.
Eventually the players were forced in combat. I remember in 3.x there seemed to be a formula for combat depending on the type of enemy involved. That exists to a degree, but combat is so much smoother than it used to be. The abilities that the classes get really mesh well and the new system is so much easier. Instead of 4 steps for a grapple its one! The players acted much more tactically and really got into the nitty gritty only relying on the dice when it was completely necessary. Throw in a few action phrases and its a much more focused game play experience.
The dungeon masters guide and monster manual feel like theyve been designed for ease of use as well. Some people will say the game has been dumbed down, and I know what they mean. I felt that way until I saw the game in action and realized the new strategic depth that was never there before. I can already see a strategy guide coming out for battle strategy. Overall I would recommend this product to both veterans and new people to the hobby-both for its new ease of use and re-imagining of a classic hobby.
4th Edition - the best RPG I've played June 22, 2008
Michael Shea (Alexandria, VA USA)
30 out of 43 found this review helpful
Dungeons and Dragons has been a staple in my nerd pedigree since I was 16 years old. I've played on and off since high school, playing D&D 2nd edition and D&D 3.5. For most of this time I was the dungeon master of the game, putting together adventures, customizing monsters and encounters, and building the story through which the players would all play.
About a year ago I got quite frustrated with D&D 3.5. Our gaming group, a group of adult friends who gathered monthly to play for about four or five hours, had reached level 13. Most of the players ran more than one character, sometimes because another member of the group left and sometimes to fill a role the party missed. During these games every battle took nearly two hours. It got so bad that I had to tune adventures around four, three, and sometimes as few as two combat encounters per adventure simply to ensure we'd leave at a normal time. Modules like "City of the Spider Queen" had to be completely re-written to let our group have any chance at finishing it.
At Gencon 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition and, a year later, I now have the 4th edition Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide sitting on my desk.
D&D 4th edition solved many of the problems I have with 3.5. Combat is fast, characters are streamlined but still powerful, I'm able to write and run the adventures I want, and everyone at the table is having a great time.
Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is the best tabletop RPG I have ever played.
What makes 4th Edition Great
There's a lot of great stuff in 4th edition but a few of these stand out as the clear advantages of the system.
First, the rules are simplified and more consistent. For example, attacks against enemies always mean rolling a d20 and adding your modifier. It doesn't matter if you're hitting with a sword or firing a fireball. You always roll attack rolls. This is a big switch from 3.5 where spells required defenders to roll saving throws while fighters rolled attacks against static defender ACs. The four defenses in 4th edition; AC, fortitude, reflex, and will; make sense and feel natural.
Second, all character classes are fun to play. The cleric in 4th edition sure isn't your daddy's cleric. Though healing is still a large part of a cleric's job, the cleric can drop a lot of damage and boost a party's effectiveness quite a bit. This is the first D&D cleric that is genuinely fun to play.
Third, class powers rock. I remember when I first saw feats in D&D 3.5 how I saw them as the evolution of skills. Feats were skills that actually meant something in combat. Now combat powers take that up a step further. Character powers are the true strength in your character. They are the abilities you will use the most often in any given combat. They are the cinematic action-packed moves that impress the rest of the players and make you feel like a real hero instead of a farmer with a sword.
Fourth, character power and monster power is very well balanced. The power curves in D&D is much smoother from level 1 to 30 than it was from 1 to 20 in 3.5. One of the brilliant changes in D&D 4th edition is the monster power levels. Instead of simply having a monster level that compares to a character level, monsters can come in four different types: minions, standard guys, elite guys, and solo guys. Minions may be as powerful statistically as a player at any level but any single successful attack kills them in a single blow. This way a level 23 party may get attacked by twenty level 20 abyssal ghouls but any single hit on any of them will drop them dead. Normal guys are the typical monsters we're used to. Elite guys are powerful versions of normal guys but count as two, have twice the hit points, and often have some sort of secondary attacks. Solo guys, like dragons and beholders, can fight off an entire party by themselves. Again, these can be at any level, so a level 3 solo white dragon still counts as a single solo creatures as does a level 30 solo ancient red dragon. As a DM, these make it a lot easier to build powerful boss creatures surrounded by threatening fodder like a good John Woo movie.
Fourth, and most importantly, 4th edition is simply more fun to play. Players focus on their powers instead of digging into the minutia of the rules. Fighters have a whole pile of actions to perform while wizards are much more streamlined and focused instead of choosing from hundreds of possible options while the rest of the players look bored.
The Problems of 4E
D&D 4th edition isn't perfect. For one, since every attack requires an attack roll, players will miss a lot more often than they used to in 3.5. Wizards always had the option to cast a magic missile and do a little damage. Now magic missiles can miss, something unheard of for the last 30 years. When your turn may not come around for ten minutes or so, it's pretty lame to miss your roll and have to wait another ten minutes.
Second, 4th edition is really built around miniatures on a battle grid. While players can possibly play D&D with just dialog and maybe some paper diagrams, most of the rules focus on a square battle grid and miniatures. For the past two years or so I've become hopelessly addicted to D&D miniatures so this isn't a problem for me. It justifies the money I've spent.
Third, character creation is still pretty complicated. Attributes, races, classes, and items all have modifiers to your baseline statistics that require quite a lot of page flipping. For example, to calculate your athletics skill check you have to know your level, your attribute modifier, your possible racial modifier, your class trained skills, and any possible armor modifier. For an experienced player this isn't so bad, and its a LOT better than the overly complicated skill system in 3.5, but it makes it difficult to quickly build characters for a one-night game. I personally can't wait for some sort of online javascript character generator that can help me quickly build PCs for a one-night game. In the mean time, I'm back to using PC-like D&D miniatures for quick games or 1 on 1 games.
The Fear of Change
There's a lot of criticism surrounding 4th edition. Amazon currently posts a customer rating of 3 out of 5. Many of the reviewers don't even own the books but simply attack with many various criticisms that generally come down to the following:
4th Edition is too simplified and misses a lot of the stuff I had and liked in 3.5.
I already have too much invested in 3.5 and I don't want to switch.
4th Edition is World of Warcraft on paper.
Nearly all of these arguments come down to a single problem; a fear of change.
I don't know how many of the critics are actual Dungeon Masters and I don't know of those who are DMs how many have tried 4th edition, but after reading through and playing through a few D&D 4th edition games, as a DM I can't see ever going back. In my 3.5 games the planning was too complicated, too much time was spent at the table looking up strange rules, and combat took forever. 4th edition gets rid of all of that without losing the tactics and fun that makes a game like D&D great.
I can understand those who feel like their shelf full of 3.5 books suddenly became worthless. However, looking at my own substantial collection of books, I see very few I'd actually give away. Many of them, like the Book of Vile Darkness and the two Fiendish Codices bring me nostalgia even now. Game systems change and there's no one forcing anyone to switch. Everyone knew Wizards would come out with a new version some day and frankly, I'm glad they did.
The "D&D = Warcraft" straw-man argument is perplexing. First, a pen and paper game is never like a computer game. Second, WoW is pretty popular so who cares if it does steal from it. There are elements to D&D that mimic some of the rules of WoW such as the talent trees and some of the character class attributes, but combat is still very much D&D and 4th Edition definitely has its own flavor.
D&D's Biggest Problem
There's one large unwritten problem surrounding a game like D&D, one that has nothing to do with the rules or the cost of the books. Sometimes its just hard to find a group with which to play. I've been lucky in my life to have four of five good D&D groups that played for over a few years. I'm very lucky to have two groups now, one a weekly game that I run with my friends and another that I play in every other week. This mostly comes from the location in which I live, there are enough people around the DC area to find a few different groups of folks. For folks living out in the sticks, however, finding a group can be rough.
Add onto this the stigma of being a D&D player, one we often enjoy together but one that gets in the way when we want to find or build a group, and many might toss D&D aside and focus on computer games instead. I know there were times in my life where I really wanted to play D&D but was too shy to really hunt down and find a good group. It takes a lot of guts to invite yourself into a group of a bunch of strangers, especially for socially awkward folks like myself who tend to gravitate towards games like this.
There's no clear solution to this. The internet helps with sites like Meetup.com and various D&D boards where people meet and get together. However, as long as the game isn't mainstream, it will be hard for a lot of people to play.
I can think of only one solution that may help give players the opportunity to play: adventures written for two players. Like D&D miniatures, D&D could be played by two players, one as a DM and one as a player. The player character would have to fight alone but could fight down a series of nasty bad guys and solve a simple plot. I've read enough posts to see a high demand for one-on-one adventures but so far have seen very few ever published. Like soloing in World of Warcraft, one-on-one D&D adventures have a better opportunity to bring D&D to more people. I hope to see this expand in the future.
Until better solutions can be found, D&D will always be a hobbyist game played by a few folks in dark basements scattered across the country.
4th Edition, My New Favorite Game
As a DM, 4th edition is a dream. It gives me all the tools to build an exciting adventure that feels like an excellent action movie without worrying about power balance. Combat is fast and fun, with lots of options for both the players and the DMs. The rules are easy enough for veteran players to jump right in with mostly logical conclusions to the questions that come up during gameplay.
As a player, D&D 4th edition makes every class fun, gives enough options and customization to build the sort of character one wants to play without so much customization as to overwhelm. Class powers are the next evolution in character action providing the action-packed actions we'd expect in a good book or movie.
Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition is the best tabletop RPG I've ever played.
Like Discovering D&D all Over Again June 11, 2008
George Purcell (Austin, TX United States)
26 out of 44 found this review helpful
I played AD&D continuously from 1981/2 through the Second Edition into the early 1990s. Since that time my D&D exposure has been through computer games, where the increasingly exploitable 3 and 3.5 systems seemed to make a tabletop game a complete horror to try and DM.
Fourth edition D&D appears to have fixed that. What some negative reviewers fail to understand is that the simple, coherent rule system it provides doesn't impede creativity--in the hands of a good GM these simple rules allow for more creativity! In fact, the increasingly chaotic set of multi/prestige class/feat combinations in 3.0/3.5 are the true enemey of creativity, leading to an obnoxious situation where players are gaming out "builds" rather than playing a character in an RPG.
Fourth edition is great because it gets away from all that. Put together a basic character how you want and role-play how heor she is different.
I just hope that future additions don't bring back the obnoxious prestige classes and multi-classing nightmare of the third edition.
A Review from a DM June 8, 2008
Nathan Hicks (Chicago, IL, USA)
45 out of 66 found this review helpful
Alright, here's a warning: if you do like 3.5, don't look at this. If you've found all the flaws I have, then do look.
3.5's flaws were painfully clear. Powergamers were frequent and cheap, using tactics that allow 16th level characters to one shot monsters double their level. The system actually discouraged roleplaying and skill use, since the wizard could just do all of that. Long live the wizard and the sorcerer, they were the only classes really worth using. Story took a backseat because roleplaying took a backseat.
4th has fixed these flaws. Every class has been made even. This means that non-casters can actually do cool stuff.
The main power of powergamers, multiclassing, has been made fair. You wanna multiclass? Take a feat for it. Granted, I don't like the actual feats given, but that's what houserules are for.
The skills have been consolidated into a sensible few. C'mon, if you're gonna be good at climbing you'll be good at swimming. The skill point system has been removed, turning it from the longest to the shortest area you spend on your character sheet.
Combat has sped up, and has gotten alot better. Movement is expected and encouraged, giving the game a more cinematic feel.
There are a few flaws besides the multiclassing feats, and here they are:
Most of the classes are more homogeneous, with the descriptive text and name being the only difference in some powers.
There just isn't...enough, to the system, but it's really not a flaw, it's a fact. The Player's Hand is so full of stuff that it couldn't hold anymore, which is why there are supplements coming out. As time goes on, the homogeneous feel of the classes will vanish, since new options will open up as time goes on. And that's what homebrewing's for anyway.
My two games of 4th have been better than the last two years of 3.5. Long live 4th. Don't listen to the others, this is the real deal. This is fantasy roleplaying. This is Dungeons and Dragons.
For the people who haven't played it....play it first before bashing it June 15, 2008
B. Aikens (TN)
17 out of 24 found this review helpful
Let me start off by saying i was one of those out there that was against D&D 4th edition from the get go. I had just gotten the 3.5 books for my birthday last year (I put off getting them because i was waiting on 4th but wizards said 4th would not come for another 2+years) and they announced 4th edition like a month later. So I was upset. Well throughout the year since the announcement my views on 4th edition have varied at times from hatred, skepticism to excitement. I didn't actually plan on liking it. Bards, Monks, druids, barbarians, and sorcerers are gone. Gnomes and half-orcs are also gone. I didn't like the nerfing of the wizard and the other spellcasters and i sure didn't like the fluff that they were shoving down our throats. I didn't like the alignment changes and i hated the way utility spells were said to work now and don't even get me started on rituals. I hated the tiefling and the dragonborn. Eladrin were high elves and stupid because they already had elves. Well i preordered the books in March just to check it out especially after reading reviews by skeptics online that hated it then played it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Well i got my books last week and ran my first 4th edition campaign tonight with all skeptics. Lets just say at the beginning the game sounded like the following : "This is stupid" "I can't believe they changed that" "dumb let's play 3.5!" By the end of the session it sounded like this: "Man this is cool" "This power is sweet" "Even the Kobolds are cool to fight against in this!" I ran a total of 3 fighting encounters which got faster with each successive one as we learned the rules. Just gotta say the battle encounters are AWESOME! They are fun to run as a dm and they are fun and challenging for the players. The powers offer tactical choices rather than just "I hit them with my sword" or in the wizards case "I just used my only level 1 spell hmmmm i guess Ill try to stay out of combat." So in other words we all turned from skeptics to believers in one game session. The in town encounters were every bit as good as 3.5 role playing encounters. These really depend entirely on how good the dm is at playing the various npcs and creating the towns, but they were just as fun in 4th as they were in 3.5. Some people have complained on the "hack and slash" method of roleplaying that 4th is said to entail but that is far from what i found here. While the rules are combat heavy they leave it to the dm to do the roleplaying stuff which is actually what i did in every edition of D&D anyway. There are skill challenges but i haven't ran one of those as of yet and look forward to trying it out later.
As far as the books themselves are concerned. All of them have great artwork and all of them are extremely useful. Some people have complained about the DM's guide but it's pretty much what you would expect from a dm's guide. Its got advice for dms as well as rules for awarding exp and treasure. It has a chapter on traps and hazards and it also has a town fully fleshed out and a short adventure in the back. The monster manual is not as bare boned as I was lead to believe. It has enough fluff on each monster and has different versions of each monster on each entry. This is extremely useful for setting up encounters and as far as the player's handbook is concerned the biggest problem is the layout. It seems hard to find anything in it and the shear amount of options to choose between while creating a character can be daunting at first. One other flaw is with the monster manual and it's extra races in the back that can be used as pc races...there are no rules on them as some have powers more powerful than normal pc races and there are no racial feats for them as they aren't fully fleshed out as pc races. You can still technically use them but i was lead to believe that they would be every bit as fleshed out as the player's handbook races. Oh well they are still usable with a little tweaking.
I was a skeptic and i still wish they could have made room for at least a few more classes. Most people bashing this set haven't even attempted to play the game yet and bash it because it is different that 1st,2nd or 3rd. It is different but all of my players loved it. They think it is a refreshing change. The game was a success and even as we played my skepticism disappeared as did theirs. In short play it before you blast it guys. Then if you hate it you can blast it for all the things you hate. Trust me, if you keep an open mind you will like it. I didn't see the need for a change in systems and I still don't. I'll still run my 3.5 games for awhile but I'm definitely bringing 4th edition into the fray now and I'm going to continue having fun with it despite the haters. This set is a must have for anyone wanting to play the newest edition of D&D. That being said, how does it stack up against 3.5? It's a totally different system and as such each system offers a different but similar experience. As far as I'm concerned they are both fun, but 4th edition is a refreshing change of pace (especially on how combat works). I recommend giving it a try if your players are willing.
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