Who still doesn't have a horse in this race?

[Nebulous]

The cool monster abilities really convinced me to switch. I ran a skirmish fight with 4 kinds of kobolds and they were all tactically very different with a minimum of work on my part. In 3e, that could only have been done really by slapping class levels on them, and then they would have just felt like little PC's getting their butts kicked.

 

[cthulhu_duck]

I'm still sitting on the fence. I also don't have much time for message boards these days due to work and the general state of messageboards.

The "healing" change is ok, if you can get your head around the push that HP aren't physical damage, and ignore the 'healing' nomenclature if it bugs you, given that the characters aren't Claire-Bear AFAIK.

Looking at what they've released for 4E D&D at the D&D experience, one concern I've had previously has come back.

D&D has evolved to be a 'heroic' fantasy role-playing game, losing over time elements of simulationism that you find in other games. 4E continues that evolution, and perhaps heads over into the 'super-heroic' frpg set. I'm not sure why that concerns me, but it does.

Another concern has arisen as well - have they simply moved complexity within the game from one point to another?

There's still things unexplained that matter to me - social encounter resolution, multiclassing, class flexibility - that I'll wait for the final rules before I form any firm opinion on 4E. Still, a few things about the 'everything you need to know...' document has me only wondering and seeking answers to more questions:

(1) Character roles being more defined mean that if you want to create a "fighter", you now need to look at three classes (possibly four) to figure out which martial class best suits the "fighter" you have in mind.

This may cause problems when someone creates a "X" because of not understanding that class Y would be a better choice. It may also be a problem where using class Y ends up changing the character substantially e.g. "But I'm not a rogue!" etc.

As familiarity with the game grows, this should go away - but there will be character concepts that don't work well with the limited class options in the at-release core rules.

Will the game at release contain any solutions for that? Rules in the DMG for customising or creating classes that fit the game developed by WOTC ?

(2) Character Powers. It used to be that if you had a player who couldn't handle playing a complex character like a prepared spellcaster, there were easier options - rogue or fighter.

Now, I'm not sure that those 'easier' options exist? For someone who can't handle too many character options - how does the game play?

(3) Different types of actions caused confusion in 3E. I'm hoping that special cases don't cause that in 4E - "I can use this character power as a move action can't I?" - are special cases for actions there in the rules?

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

I'm looking at 4E as a lifeline.

I am so burnt out on 3.5 that 4E is basically my hope for staying in the hobby. If it doesn't pan out, I'll probably just drop out an stick to wargames instead from now on.

Pretty sad considering I've been playing D&D for 28 years.

Same here on all. Though I'm at 26 years, so I guess there's a slight difference.

Lifeline is as an apt a word as I've seen describing 4E.

 

[Turjan]

At the moment, I'm not in a hurry to change to 4e. I might look at it when all the core classes have been published (in one or two years?). There's no immediate need, as I'm still in the middle of using 3.5 stuff and other games at the moment.

Not to threadjack(?), but it was my understanding the free updates from 3.0 to 3.5 were available on WotC website as a file or something. Were most folks not aware of it? That way one didn't have to buy the new books. (NOTE: I came into DnD at 3.5 so never had 3.0.)

Some very general updates, yes. Plus, of course, the SRD. But roughly one third of all spells got changed, which means that the change could not be handled by using the 3.0 PHB plus two pages of changes.