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[thecasualoblivion]

Originally Posted by wingsandsword

In the long term, that is a design flaw.

3.5 had balance in mind, but it was a lot more open. It was an open-ended framework that designers could add new things to. It meant it was easier to break balance, but it was far easier to expand. It had room for creative new kinds of magic like Incarnum, among many others. It had room for new classes that went in new directions. It was a system but it was meant to be expanded.

4e is much more tightly built, to me in a bad way. Niche protection, very tight class design, very closed-end design from a mechanical end. Yes, you can come up with two dozen new power sources, but in the end it's just fluff and slight variations on what came before, but if 4e ends up being as innovatively expanded as 3.5 I will be utterly amazed.

3.5E had balance in mind when it nerfed melee characters and removed every roadblock to caster dominance compared to AD&D? As for innovative characters, which ones? Incarnum was kind of far fetched, Bo9S and Psionics were controversial favorites, Tome of Magic included the interesting Binder and two failures. For PHB2, Beguiler and Duskblade were solid but hardly on the cutting edge of innovation.

As for 4E:

Niche Protection--Aside from limiting classes to one role and the fact that you'll never be as good at a different role as a class of that role, there is a lot of flexibility here. I'm currently playing an unkillable melee Striker Wizard.

Very Tight Class Design--I see only one limitation here, and the best way to describe this is that if you are a Fighter, you can't build yourself to not be a Fighter. I don't really see the issue. The classes and different build choices for those classes are all plenty distinct.

Closed Ended--PHB2 introduced some interesting subtle variants on the game, as have the Monk preview and the Artificer. Nothing as big a departure as Incarnum, but the differences are distinctive enough to be differences.