Anyone else wonder why they didn't combine the 3.5 spell system and the 4th edition..

[Vayden]

I wake up every morning and thank God that the 3.5 spell system is dead. Once you got to high level, it absolutely destroyed the game for everyone except the guy playing the caster. Our casters in our groups at high-level resorted to purposely un-optimizing themselves to try and make it playable and it still was annoying as all get out.

Edit: Should read - "I wake up every morning and thank God that the 1E-3.5 spell system is dead."

 

[Henry]

Strange. For me the mechanics helped my story telling. I was able to think up stories that revolved around particular spell uses.

I started an adventure recently by imprisoning the fighter and forcing the party to do what the imprisoner asked to get him to release the fighter. I loved thinking of new ways to use spells to trick my players.

Other than the "tricking my players" bit (I hope the fighter's player didn't sit around the whole game unable to play at all!) I'm seeing ways that 4e can spark adventure ideas all on their own. A couple for example:

1. Someone noted that it is implied in the Cleric entry that the Cleric gets their power from their ordination, moreso than from their god. This opens a whole kettle of worms with rogue evil clerics besmirching the names of good gods, and the churches taking efforts to put down these rogue elements. It could also imply that when a god bestows power, they can't necessarily take it away, which has fascinating campaign effects.
   
2. The very nature of rituals means that you can have customized rituals to put in-game effects into play that could not ordinarily be accomplished with 3e by-the-book spells. Undead Armies, Flying Castles, etc? All ritual, which may or may not be available to the PCs to find, AND even if they find them they may not be able to cast them (that flying castle? Requires the hearts of 10 lawful good virgins, whose sinlessness makes their spirits integral to the essence of a lighter-than-air castle. That Undead Army? Requires condemning the souls of every corpse you raise to the Hells.)

As for the play and counter-play, that seems to go on more on the battlefied than it ever did in 3e, whereas in 3e it was more about being prepared before you even get to the battlefield. Example: Your counterspelling. Unless you wanted to take a risk with dispel magic, counterspelling meant you had to know the exact spell being cast (or given certain feats in splatbooks, at the very least you had to know the school it was). If you didn't go into battle with it prepped, you were out of luck. With 4e, there was an excellent example in the video podcast recently where a mind flayer was digging into a PC's brain, and the other PCs had various ways to help:
One conjured tentacles to beat up on the mind flayer before he could succeed.
One tried to use an Otiluke's sphere to separate the two (but failed his roll);
One was using her paladin powers to take damage from one of the minions attacking the poor victim.

In many 4e scenarios, it's as much about teamwork as it is about the wizard being a one-man show, with his walls of force, his dominate spells, the vortexes of teeth, the evervations and avasculations, his SR-defeating orbs of energy, etc. It's more about getting the enemy into position by swapping places with him, or knocking him out with sleep long enough to take care of some of the forces without retaliation, or forming defensive lines so that the skirmishers can't get around the defenders to wail on the softer members, etc. Where 3e improved on making characters move on the battlefield, 4e improves on that even more. I will miss my Vancian magic, but I'll not miss triple the prep time for a 3e adveture as I am for a 4e one, nor will I miss trying to run a published monster with a whole-page stat block, or figuring out how to trim my homebrew monsters down to a managable stat block for one person to manage 5 separate ones of.

 

[Psion]

As for removing options... that's more or less nonsense. It removed options from some classes and distributed among all the others.

Meaning that you now cater to one middle of the road player type, instead of having options for both ends of the decision-intensity playscale.

Not a plus in my book.

Also, skills (both character-supplied and player-supplied) now mean something, seeing as 'problem-solving' now involves more that 'which spell do I use?'.

Er, and skills didn't mean something before.

Considering problem scenarios like removal of craft skills, I think they actually mean leass.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Meaning that you now cater to one middle of the road player type, instead of having options for both ends of the decision-intensity playscale.

Not a plus in my book.

I'll second that. I like the simpler 4e casters with rituals and at-will options and uses for multiple ability scores. I do not like the fact that fighters and rogues are fundamentally the same as wizards and clerics.

 

[GnomeWorks]

I'll second that. I like the simpler 4e casters with rituals and at-will options and uses for multiple ability scores. I do not like the fact that fighters and rogues are fundamentally the same as wizards and clerics.

Third'ed!

 

[Agamon]

Anyone else feeling this same way?

Not really. I like a unified mechanic better. That, and waiting more than 20 minutes while the high level cleric picked his spells was annoying. So was the old, "Yeah, I have access to that spell but not right now" syndrome.

 

[Mort]

I'll second that. I like the simpler 4e casters with rituals and at-will options and uses for multiple ability scores. I do not like the fact that fighters and rogues are fundamentally the same as wizards and clerics.

Seeing as the goal was a unified mechanic the fact that they are "fundamentally the same" is a feature(love it or hate it). That said, fighters and rogues play very differently from clerics and wizards even though the mechanic is the same, and for me that makes it a good change.

As for the OP. I like the new way better. In prior edditions, fighters got better on a linear scale while casters essentially got exponentially better. Great for the caster players, lousy for the non-casters.

 

[Vayden]

I'll second that. I like the simpler 4e casters with rituals and at-will options and uses for multiple ability scores. I do not like the fact that fighters and rogues are fundamentally the same as wizards and clerics.

I see this brought up all the time - not be accusatory, but have you played 4E for 3-4 sessions? Fighters, Rogues, Wizards and Clerics all play extremely differently - just because they use the same layout in the class chapter doesn't mean they play anything like each other in my experience.

 

[Lackhand]

I see this brought up all the time - not be accusatory, but have you played 4E for 3-4 sessions? Fighters, Rogues, Wizards and Clerics all play extremely differently - just because they use the same layout in the class chapter doesn't mean they play anything like each other in my experience.

Seconded

Constructively, albeit perhaps repetitiously: while there's now no easy "starter" class ("Never played D&D before? Grab the fighter, that's fairly easy to drive!"), I'm very far from taking this as a bad thing.

You can make things as easy to drive or as hard to drive as you like simply by using more or less strategy in how you use the powers available; now everyone can be the fighter ("relatively ineffective in the hands on a nonexpert player") by using just their at-wills, or squandering their /encounters or /dailys; and everyone can be the wizard ("power/effectiveness exponentially related to the amount of system mastery achieved") with attention to teamwork & tactics.

Score!

 

[Vayden]

And to be honest, they're all "pretty easy to drive" - I had a brand-new player last Saturday - rolled up a 2nd level Dragonborn Fighter with a little help and jumped right in. He didn't get his marking ability really figured out until halfway through the session, but he had no problem using his powers. To be honest, the thing that gave him the biggest problem was remembering when to roll a d20 and when to roll his other dice.