So I finished my first full night of 4th Edition D&D last night (prior nights had been "Let's check out the rules and play the test module" and "Let's all roll characters," respectively), and it's actually pretty fantastic. There have been some criticisms, certainly, but so far, almost all the changes in 4th Edition have been good.

Highlights:

* Class Balance: Spellcasters are no longer useless wusses at level 1. They're also no longer overpowered at later levels. The opposite is true of melee classes, so everyone can contribute at every level, and no one gets bored. Nice.

* Fast, Tactical Combat: Combat has been completely reworked, allowing (essentially requiring) everyone to take an active part. And with at-will actions doing greater damage than auto-attacking, even the melee types are making several active tactical choices each round. Add in some tactical specialist classes (Warlord and, to a much lesser extent, Clerics), and you really have much more dynamic, interesting fights. There really is a "tide of battle," and teamwork is far more rewarding.

Did I mention "fast?" Because I should have. Combat is at least 50% faster. We had 9 people at the table and got through 2 major combats plus a ton of backstory and out-of-game snacking in the time it would have taken us to get through one fight back in 3.5.

* Roles and Builds: Straight out of an MMO, to be sure, but it works. A party should have at least one character in each of 4 roles: Protectors (tanks), Strikers (dps), Leaders (healers/buffers), and Controllers (cc/aoe). Each class specializes in one of the roles, but you can build your talent tree to take you toward a more personally interesting place within your role. For example, my Cleric (Leader) is speccing Battle Cleric, so I get to beat on badguys (which creates buffs for party members and debuffs for enemies) while still performing healing on the side as needed, but without getting bored--and still getting the satisfaction of caving in some skulls. There's a lot more "play what you want to play, how you want to play it," and with some attention to detail, you can make it work.

The verdict:

Good times. Combat was about as fast as raid encounters in WoW, with all the added trash-talking, pretzel-eating, and fun of a tabletop RPG.

And Jarlan the Cleric pwns.