Herobizkit said:
With the advent of 4.0, it seems like the ENTIRE focus of combat is going to be placed on the battle board and how PC's can manipulate it. This is clearly not going to be an edition for my storytelling tastes.
And strangely enough, this was the biggest improvement from 2e for me. In 2e I was used to combat being off of a battlemat most of the time and to consist of this:
Fighter 1: I hit AC 2 for 7 damage.
Fighter 2: I hit AC 4 for 8 damage.
Wizard: Can I fireball without hitting the fighters? No? Ok, I magic missile one for 6 damage.
Cleric: I cast a cure light on Fighter 1.
Thief: I'd like to backstab the enemies...can I get behind them? Oh, right, once they've seen me I can't use my backstab power. I hide in the back and wait for the battle to be over.
DM: The enemies go, the first one misses, the second one hits fighter 2 for 14 damage.
Then repeat forever.
When my players saw 3e and they realized they had rules on flanking, sneak attacks could be used EVERY round in the right position, placing a fireball was now possible since it didn't bounce back and kill everyone in a small room. They loved it. They could really use tactics and positioning in order to gain an advantage.
It wasn't until a lot of number crunching and min-maxing before people started realizing that fighters had the one of the least number of options out of any class on what to do from round to round along with rogues and barbarians. When people realized it was much better to spend a round attacking for 25 damage than it was to add +2 to the damage of your allies.
But amongst all of that we never found out storytelling abilities diminished in the slightest. I mean, we never told stories during combat. It was always: "Storytelling and roleplaying which led you to a battle in which people would roll dice over and over again until they were all dead or the enemies were, then back to role playing and story." Now, it was the same pattern but people weren't saying "Can we get this battle over with? It is taking too long." and instead saying "We need to find a battle. I can't wait to try out my new powers!"