Feeling short changed by 4th Ed.

[Doug McCrae]

I can see how some aspects of 4e are geared more towards making money for WotC than the consumer's benefit. The importance of the battlegrid is the main one. The lack of some moderately popular monsters in the MM - frost giants and iron golems. Fewer classes than 3e, though this might be entirely down to limited space in the PHB.

Otoh the game contains all the most popular classes, races and monsters - fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric, elf, orc, goblin, dragon, drow. Personally I'd take death knights over frost giants any day. And even though I'm a fan of iron golems I don't see them as fundamental to D&D.

One major change - magic items in the PHB - actually benefits the customer more than WotC.

Imo, the game would only be incomplete if it lacked wizards or elves or dragons or something that was equally central to the D&D experience. Gnomes? Bards? Iron golems? All marginal. Do 2e, 3e and BECMI feel incomplete because they lack psionics in the core rules? No, because psionics, like druids and half-orcs, are marginal.

 

[delericho]

I just wanted to point something out.

The AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook had 8 classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, and Wizard. It also had 6 races: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Elf, Human. 4e has 8 classes and 8 races.

You missed out the eight specialist Wizards, and thirteen different multiclass combinations, none of which exist in anything like the same form in 4e.

Additionally, it's worth noting that 2nd Edition received a lot of criticism for the removal of the Half-orc, Assassin and Monk as core options. And other than these removals, no edition up to 4e has removed options from the core rules.

 

[Ragnar69]

4ed less options than 3rd? No way!
A few months ago we wanted to do a small mini cmpaign lvl 1-3 PHB only to teach a new player. We were sitting there for hours pouring over the PHB to get halfway decent characters. I.e. I wanted to play a halfling rogue. Yay for me. Miserable in melle because Weapon Finesse needs BAB +1, useless in ranged because Sneak Attacks are nearly impossible and Precise Shot not available.

Not to speak of the feats or spells. So many in the 3.5 PHB, but half of them junk. In 4ed however they are all good choices, not clearly superior or inferior.

So 3ed has more theoretical options but definatly fewer usable ones.

 

[The Little Raven]

You missed out the eight specialist Wizards, and thirteen different multiclass combinations, none of which exist in anything like the same form in 4e.

I also forgot about race limitations, which dramatically lowers the amount of possible concepts (no dwarf wizards, elf paladins, or anything like that). Also didn't mention the level limitations, which impose an artificial cap on certain character types in addition to the slower/faster rate of progression they use because of their class. And that's not even touching on the fact that several of the classes had frak-all compared to the spellcasters (yay, I get Weapon Specialization with one weapon, while the spellcasters get 20+ new options every other level).

And if we're going to count Specialist Wizards as entirely separate classes, then I guess we can count individual builds of 4e classes as separate classes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

4ed less options than 3rd? No way!

 

[delericho]

There are instructions in the MM for scaling monsters down. I scaled down some Drow to fight some 1st level characters and it worked great. Should be fairly easy to do the same with a lot of the other monsters in there.

That's still rather a lot of work, and besides, doesn't open up the monster-space very much. Looking at scaled-down level 2 and 3 monsters still only gives us hobgoblins, skeletons and zombies, human bandits, and very young white dragons (oh, and some of the drakes).

By contrast, the 3.5e MM had something like three times the number of creature types at CR 1 or less, and about 5 times if we include CR 2 creatures... and even that was too few (how many PCs had to fight dire rats yet again?).

That said, the 4e MM has better support across the full level range (where 3e tailed off after CR 12 or so). And hopefully, WotC will be able to address the lack of monsters fairly quickly. For now, though, it's somewhat lacking. YMMV, of course.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wow, talk about missing the point.

Oh, the irony. Mourn didn't get my post at all.

Mourn - In the end, 4E took stuff away, no other version of D&D except 2E, which took a lot of stick for it, did that. You can dance around the issue, but it remains present, and you just seem to fanboi-ish in your insistence that "4E is better maaaaan".

As I've said, 4E arguably presents more real options. That's what you should be saying, not trying to make out that because it has the same number of classes as the most-hated version of D&D, it's all cool. I mean jeeeez.

What I said though, you apparently didn't catch is "4E doesn't have a lot of classes". It doesn't. It has a reasonable number. Maybe for you, anything less than "a lot" isn't a reasonable number. After all, someone out there like triple-hamburgers, and clearly merely a double isn't reasonable. However for me, eight classes is a reasonable number, but it isn't a lot. I didn't feel like I had "classes to spare" like I did with 3E, or even with 2E (because to me, the multiclassing system, completely different to that of 4E, seemed to add so many potential, viable options).

It's all opinion in the end, and saying "Omg but 2E had 8 classes!" doesn't prove anything other than that you don't get what "a lot" means.

 

[The Little Raven]

Uh-huh. It also had Speciality Priests, and Speciality Wizards, neither of which is present in 4E, and importantly, 4E doesn't have Druids or Bards in the core books.

If Specialty Priests and Specialty Wizards count as additional classes, then so do separate builds of 4e classes, since they can be entirely different.

It also had, as I recall (perhaps inaccurately) more description of each class.

Empty fluff doesn't substitute for a lack of mechanical distinctiveness. Most 2e classes were severely lacking in options, because of the reigning 'spellcasters uber alles' mentality that was still present.

Still, that's 20 years ago, Mourn.

Hey, you're the one that brought up AD&D, not me.

What's more relevant is 3E, and politician-style, you avoided mentioning that because it doesn't support your point.

I didn't mention it because you said AD&D, not D&D 3rd Edition.

3E had Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer and Wizard, and had specialization for Wizards and some limited specialization for Clerics.

Again, if we're bringing in specialization, then builds count, since 4e builds provide more mechanical distinction than 3e specialization/domains did.

Maybe you should argue that they had less meaningful options or something instead?

That's what I would have done if we had been discussing 3e.

Thinking about it - 4E does have a "lot" of one thing missing from the 3E books - Decent advice/guidelines for players, and decent advice (but not guidelines) for GMs.

I vehemently disagree. The 4e PHB starts off with a description of roleplaying and immediately starts giving the player advice on character creation and concept that the 3e PHB never had. There is more dedicated space to discussing roleplaying in the PHB alone than in all three core books from 3e.

And if you're saying that the 3e DMG provided more advice for a DM than the 4e one, I would have to assume you didn't read both of them, because 4e's amount and quality of advice is head-and-shoulders above the 3e DMG.

There's certainly plenty of things that I expected to be in a DMG that simply weren't there though, not least the complete lack of advice on designing powers, classes or races.

Teaching a new DM how to run the game is more important than teaching him how to make new stuff for it. He needs that baseline of knowing how the system functions before he can start wrenching on it. The DMG 1 is the guide to running the game, just as it should be.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I vehemently disagree. The 4e PHB starts off with a description of roleplaying and immediately starts giving the player advice on character creation and concept that the 3e PHB never had. There is more dedicated space to discussing roleplaying in the PHB alone than in all three core books from 3e.

And if you're saying that the 3e DMG provided more advice for a DM than the 4e one, I would have to assume you didn't read both of them, because 4e's amount and quality of advice is head-and-shoulders above the 3e DMG.

No, you don't. Re-read my post. I said the opposite. Making assumptions about what you expect me to say had lead you to being stupid.

 

[The Little Raven]

Mourn didn't get my post at all.

I got your post perfectly. Don't equate the things I wish to address with a lack of understanding of your post.

In the end, 4E took stuff away, no other version of D&D except 2E, which took a lot of stick for it, did that.

Did I say otherwise? If so, where? Otherwise, this is completely irrelevant to anything I've said.

As I've said, 4E arguably presents more real options.

A meaningless option is a waste of space. Suggesting you have more options when most of those options are meaningless is a semantic argument.

That's what you should be saying, not trying to make out that because it has the same number of classes as the most-hated version of D&D, it's all cool.

Be more clear about which editions you're talking about in the future if you want to avoid issues like this.

It's all opinion in the end, and saying "Omg but 2E had 8 classes!" doesn't prove anything other than that you don't get what "a lot" means.

You seem to be assigning an awful lot of intent and motivation to me that doesn't exist in the post I made. Last time I checked, that was against the forum rules.