[Those who like 4ed] What has been lost?

[Mercurius]

I am asking this question of those who like (and preferably have played) 4ed; if you hate 4ed please don't bother, not really or only because of the spewage factor, but because the question is based upon the idea that 4ed is the latest link in a positive developmental chain from OD&D up. Whether or not this is true is not the point of this thread.

So the question:

What has been lost along the way? A specific secondary question might be, what elements of prior editions were excised from 4ed but shouldn't have been?

The main thing I see is what 1ed called 0-level characters. That is, truly starting adventurers, aka "off the farm." There is no option for this in 4ed which basically starts with the characters being pretty seasoned (thus Heroic Tier), or at least fully trained and above the level of your garden variety city guardsman or soldier. I've thought of putting together some kind of 0-level rules option that would effectively take the PCs from adolescence to adulthood, effectively their apprenticeship years, thus a kind of "Apprentice Tier." This would work really well for epic storylines ala high fantasy novels where the protagonist(s) often start "off the farm" or as young nobles, etc.

 

[Mallus]

High-power --and more importantly, high-utility-- magic spells in the hands of the players. That's about it.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

The Spell-Preparation-Grin:
The expression on your face when you realize that you memorized the exactly perfect loadout of spells for the job - and yes, the slot for Fireshield is going to ROCK this time.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Long-term magics and conditions.

I understand the need to balance effects by combat in the current system, I really do. And 9 times out of 10, I endorse it wholeheartedly. But I still wish there was more potential for longer term influence: charms and domination that last for days or weeks, curses that you have to work to shrug off, that sort of thing.

And yes, rituals and DM fiat makes up for much of this, but not quite all.

On a related note, I miss some of the non-combat-focused magic. Utilities and rituals are almost there, but I'd like to see more non-combat utilities that are both useful and evoke some of the feel of magic of editions past.

 

[Filcher]

Gygaxian weirdness. The ultimate in exception-based design.

 

[Nifft]

Gygaxian weirdness.

Also: Gygaxian prose. I like learning new, big words.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Barastrondo]

This isn't really specific to 4e (as it started in 3e), but gold as stuff that can be spent for pure roleplaying enjoyment without incurring any significant disadvantage. I miss the days of saving up for forts, sailing ships and spyglasses. That got a lot scarcer when gold became a way to upgrade your stats with magic items. With the emphasis on teamwork in 4e (something I generally like quite a bit), if gold is something you use to upgrade your loot, you're hurting the party if you don't upgrade.

There's the alternate award system added in, which is nice. But the way treasure awards scale so dramatically with level kind of undercuts the idea that the luxury good you bought at 8th level is still worth something at 18th. It somewhat undercuts the player who likes spending gold on the trappings of success.

 

[Dausuul]

A couple of things that I miss:

• Easy non-battlemat play. From OD&D through 2E, the trend was toward making the game easier to play without a battlemat. That trend reversed in 3E and the reversal has continued into 4E. This makes me sad.
• Cursed magic items. Cursed items were poorly implemented in previous editions, tending to be something of a "gotcha" trick; but their existence elevated magic items beyond the bland packets of crunch that they are in 4E. Magic items in old editions were exciting and dangerous things, to be tampered with at your peril. I wish they'd looked for a better way to implement cursed items instead of just scrapping them.

(I also miss support for ruling domains and waging mass combat at higher levels. But I can hardly blame 4E for that, since the only edition I can recall with core support for those elements was BECMI.)

In a more general sense... I guess I feel like the game should be more grounded in the imaginary world. Previous editions, especially 2E, made a big effort to evoke a sense of setting. If you look at 2E's equipment list, for instance, you see pages and pages of stuff, much of which has little or nothing to do with adventuring; and prices that reflect at least some effort to imitate medieval reality.

Compare that to 4E's equipment list, which is laser-focused on adventuring utility, and has a suit of full plate cost only twice as much as a suit of leather armor. I understand why they did it this way, but I think they failed to count the cost. Back in the day, I would look down the equipment list and it really made me think about my character and the world he or she lived in - how much would my character spend on clothing? A horse? Do I have a pet, and is it a cat or a dog or a hunting falcon? Do I wear a tunic or a robe, and what kind of inns do I stay at? 4E's equipment list has none of that*.

4E feels unmoored to me. As a DM, the mechanics of my job are easier than ever before, but creating that sense of setting seems harder.
[SIZE=-2]
*Also, having prices for all those oddball items encouraged PCs to come up with clever uses for them. Anybody who's ever watched "The Princess Bride" should understand why it's important to know if the party can afford a wheelbarrow.[/SIZE]

 

[Nebulous]

Non-combat magic. Rituals are a step in the right direction, but they don't quite work the way i want them to. And unpredicable magic for that matter, where a spell can have a possibly unintended side effect, like lightning bolts richoeting off walls. The way magic has been sanitized (and in many ways for the better because high level magic users were too powerful) still bothers me. I can't help but think it could have been balanced in such a way that they doesn't feel so different than the past.

 

[rjdafoe]

My biggest complaint about 4E, that was taken away is the real magic items.

It may just be me, but magic items do not seem very special to me. Most in my group feel the same way. I feel that the item use per day is the most horrible thing that is in the rules.