Here be Dragons (Dugeons & Dragons Third Edition Player's Handbook)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Dugeons & Dragons Third Edition Player's Handbook
Date:	31/07/01 (532 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good to look at, easy to use

Disadvantages: having to buy a whole nwe set of books if you already play AD&D

The new edition of Dungeons and Dragons - it's third incarnation, marks a significant change to the mechanics, but has not deviated from the original spirit of the game. Every change seems to be an improvement. As a player of this new system I have had plenty of opportunity to test the new player's handbook, and I like what I find.

The premise of the system: Dungeons and Dragons allows you to run high fantasy games. The core books do not provide you with settings - you could use ones that you know of, invent your own or use the packs - such as Dark Sun and DragonLance. ( A good idea as creating a whole world takes a lot of work.) You invent a character with certain attributes and go through a range of expereinces, puzzles, interactions and encounters.

Basic mechanics: You have a set of statistics for various attributes, both physical and mental. By rolling dice and adding the bonuses or reductions gained from your stats, you determin the probability of performing any given action. As you advance, your chances improve. 2nd edition Ad&D was inconsistent - sometimes high numbers were good, sometimes low numbers and it was hard to keep track. The new version is much simpler and far more straightforward as you just roll the dic and add any bonuses you have. Very easy to remember. The allocating of bonuses is now based on a smooth and coherrent system. Combat works more fluidly, and there is more scope for degree of failure or sucess.

Character Classes: in the 2nd edition, there were basic character classes - Fighter, Ranger, Wizard, Priest, Rogue. You could get seperate packs for things like swashbucklers, barbarians, druids and the like but there wasn't much scope. Your character class determined your skills, it was very hard to be of more than one class and characetrs of the same type could be hard to differentiate. In thrid edition there are extra classes - Sorcerer, and Monk,there's more flexibility for multiclassing and yo
u have far more scope for creating a tailor made character.

Races: You can play the followig races: Human, elf, half elf, gnome, dwarf, half orc, halfling. In 2nd edition, the balance of penalties and advantages between races wasn't much good, now it's far better, allowing serious racial differences and making the game more interesting.

Skills, attributes and the like. As with 2nd edition, you get scores out of twenty for wisdom, intelligence, dexterity, strength, constitutiona and charisma, although the exact way in which these apply is different - some magic now works on charisma for example. A score of 10 is average. If you have a 9 in something, you get a minus one to any scores affected by that ability, just as if you have twelve you would get a plus two. Eg Nimue has a charisma of 9, so when trying to empathise with something she rolls a d20 and takes one away from it. Her strength is of twelve, so when she tries to life something, she rolls her dice and adds 2 - all very simple. You can use your experience points to buy more ability in skills - totally coherrent system. There are far more things it is assumed you can do moderatly - read, write, swim, sit on a horse etc. Even if you have no points in a specific skill, you can often (but not always) have a go using your basic stats.

Feats: Feats are a new addition that allow you to do funky things like firing from horseback, casting a spell whilst being hit over the head or slicing down half a dozen enemies with a single blow. These really add to the heroic element, and there's plenty of scope for creating new feats.

Other than that, the book contains information about how to advance you character, spells and casting them, how to do combat, details about a few monsters, gods and other background details. It's a good basic resource. Unlike its predescessor, this edition is well layed out and beautifully illustrated - not only are the images pleasing to the eye,
but they also provide helpful information about the game.

For anyone who has got 2nd edition, I would strongly recomend investing in this new version as in my opinion it is far better. For anyone new to gaming, this is a comprehensible and user friendly system - it will take a bit of learning but is well worth a go.

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