Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
I'm a huge fan of 4e myself... I remember begrudgingly giving 3e a try before finally deciding I liked it. I remember gawking at the loss of THAC0 (defense scores go up?! What madness is this?!) This never happened for me with 4e. I was probably the most excited member of my group about it when it first came out.
That said, if I had to sum up my disappointments with the system, they would be thusly:
1: In earlier editions (3.x especially), if you played a character that had little no utility in combat, that was okay. There was still plenty for your character to do. One of my favorite characters was a Master Inquisitive who fired crossbow bolts wide in most combats and one time threatened a kobold prisoner into helping out with a difficult melee, and that was it. Later in that same run I played an eight-year telepath who could certainly do thing in combat, but that wasn't his defining characteristic. Everything that defines your character in 4e is what their combat utility is. Even non-combatants (like the aforementioned princess warlord) is generally defined by how she contributes to combat without actively attacking herself. This was due to game balance and I do appreciate that, but I do miss my "utility" characters. This leads to disappointment number two:
2: Race/Class combos. With every race gaining two stats and every class's attacks keying off any of the six different stats, there's now an almost key prerogative to use one of the pre-defined race/class combos. Dwarven Rogues are simply outclassed by their Elven and Halfling comrades, and in a game so delicately balanced it makes any such pairing (where the class attack stat doesn't match your racial bonuses) completely undesirable, especially considering how expensive it is to buy a natural 18 in stat buy.
These few nitpicks aside, I will say that 4e produces greater fun with greater ease than any of the previous editions I've played (started at AD&D 2e).
That said, if I had to sum up my disappointments with the system, they would be thusly:
1: In earlier editions (3.x especially), if you played a character that had little no utility in combat, that was okay. There was still plenty for your character to do. One of my favorite characters was a Master Inquisitive who fired crossbow bolts wide in most combats and one time threatened a kobold prisoner into helping out with a difficult melee, and that was it. Later in that same run I played an eight-year telepath who could certainly do thing in combat, but that wasn't his defining characteristic. Everything that defines your character in 4e is what their combat utility is. Even non-combatants (like the aforementioned princess warlord) is generally defined by how she contributes to combat without actively attacking herself. This was due to game balance and I do appreciate that, but I do miss my "utility" characters. This leads to disappointment number two:
2: Race/Class combos. With every race gaining two stats and every class's attacks keying off any of the six different stats, there's now an almost key prerogative to use one of the pre-defined race/class combos. Dwarven Rogues are simply outclassed by their Elven and Halfling comrades, and in a game so delicately balanced it makes any such pairing (where the class attack stat doesn't match your racial bonuses) completely undesirable, especially considering how expensive it is to buy a natural 18 in stat buy.
These few nitpicks aside, I will say that 4e produces greater fun with greater ease than any of the previous editions I've played (started at AD&D 2e).
but you as a player arent on the bench during battle even if your character isnt making attacks. 
