Too assist with your bafflement, here's that room in 3e.
[Snip]
Your welcome
..... Although what was so difficult about that exactly remains a mystery to me.
You've just missed the point several times over. It's not the individual parts of the terrain that are difficult to stat - your stats are functionally equivalent to the 4e version and only look simpler to you because you're used to the jargon.
The difference is in the stunting. In how the terrain is used. In 3.X statting that room up is a largely wasted effort. In 4e it really isn't (although it is probably overkill).
Take the firepit. It's a large area that's on fire. It is
highly unlikely that anyone is going to step into that firepit willingly. Why would they? It's a firepit. It's gonna hurt them. So the relevance of the firepit is determined by how easy it is to push someone in - otherwise it's just a square people aren't going to walk through.
In 3.X it's not worth
bull rushing someone in - you have to give up your attack to do it and unless you have
Improved Bull Rush they get a free swing. Especially as they are just going to take a 5' step
out of the firepit next time. There are a few feats (e.g. Pathfinder's
Shield Slam) and a few spells (e.g.
Gust of Wind) that can help force people into the fire pit. But these are both very rare (and note that Gust of Wind won't even force small non-fliers in). You might as well place a rope round the area of a firepit and say "No one cross this" for all the game impact it's going to have most of the time.
In 4e on the other hand I'd estimate
at least half of all PCs have some sort of forced movement. The sword and board fighter probably has Tide of Iron - an at will attack that allows them to attack and drive the enemy back five feet as well as make a decent attack. The wizard probably has Freezing Burst or Thunderwave as an At Will, both of which affect a 15 foot by 15 foot area and move anyone they hit (or possibly even Beguiling Strands). The archer ranger (Hunter) can not only easily slide people into the firepit, but can use another arrow to pin them there until the escape or knock them over. And these are just a small sample of At Will abilities. If the PCs play well, any monster who starts within ten feet of the firepit may go in. (The monsters can, of course, do this right back to the PCs). The firepit instantly becomes a defining feature of the battle rather than just something that's there.
Your chandelier falling is singularly pointless IMO. The person underneath it is going to get a reflex save (or is it really autohit?). And it does very little damage - 2d8 is only about comparable to a first level PC with a sword - meaning that fighter, rogue, and probably even the cleric are better off Just Hitting Soemthing. Which means that the candelabra is dropped by a wizard simply because he doesn't want to waste a spell and isn't good with weapons. Great incentive to stunt there.
The 4e chandelier on the other hand does a
lot more damage becuase bringing down a chandelier should be
the highlight of the night not something the wizard does because he's bored of making crossbow attacks. It uses the Limited Use table rather than an attempts to model it by physical impact, making it worthwhile for
anyone rather than just the wizard. And because everyone knows it's worth it and can guess where the chandelier's going to hit, people are going to use forced movement to get people under the chandelier, making for even more of an epic crash.
For both those reasons, and for more (such as the full round attacks in 3.X as against standard attacks and increased movement on certain actions in addition to your normal move) stunting works much, much better in 4e than 3.X. You have the incentives to stunt, you have the ability to set people up for stunts, and you have the mobility.
Oh, and being pedantic, a
candelabra is not a
chandelier. A candelabra should probably do about 1d3 damage as a one handed improvised weapon. Maybe as much as 1d6 for a
very big one.
