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I guess it's one of those things that always a little funky with a phased initiative system. Kind of like how people can't actually march in sync, it's always person 1 who moves, then person 2, then person 3, etc. Readying actions can help but is clumsy and creates it's own problems (for example...

I'll grant you that there could be a few more interesting spellcaster feats in the PHB. Keep in mind though that one of the design decisions of 4e is that all the really cool things are powers, and feats are usually just minor bonuses here and there.

Parry and weapon locking did happen in 3e it was just assumed to be abstracted by the rules in the same way that disarm is in 4e. And if you had actually played 4e, you would know that the wizard having the same BAB as the fighter does not make him remotely as skilled with swords. It does...

It actually says that every staff functions as a quarter staff if used in battle.

Well I'm sure there are some genres or playstyles where not being able to die in combat would be apropriate. That has nothing to do with abstraction though, and is irrelevent to what we are discussing. Actually in every edition you got better at surviving attacks as you gained level. 4e is...

Last I heard it was still questionable at best as to weither you could use a staff in one hand while using it as an implement. But the rest of the answer is certainly true.

A 5th level wizard has 42 different monsters he can summon. That's a lot of sheets for the DM to print off for him. And if you have a druid in the party he has a whole different large selection. That's a perfectly good rule, but it's not the official rule. The official rule is that you can...

And just like riposting, parrying, locking weapons, throwing your enemy off balance, cutting off his hand, stabbing him through the eye, hamstringing him, or any of 100 other valid tactics that are abstracted in the traditional D&D combat system.

Well first off how did you give your players the stats on the summoned monsters or things like the effects of spells that are only described in the DMG? These things are way too complicated to be simply descibed. Did you actually print out the 20+ pages of monster stats that would be necesary...

Except that there are disarming rules in 4e. It just requires a power to do so. Anyway the D&D combat system has always been abstracted. It's assumed people are always trying to do effective things like disarm their foe, cut off their hand, stab them through the eye, lock their weapon with...

Unfortunately what you describe is pretty much not possible in a 3e game run by the standard rules. Spellcasters need access to the monster manual to look up the stats of the creatures they summon or turn into. Meanwhile anyone who took a magic item creation feat needed to to be able to look up...

An ordinary person can also instantly kill somebody (or at least blind them)by stabbing them through the eyeball. None the less there have never been any rules for doing so....you just attack. This is the point of an abstract combat system. It's generally assumed that people are always trying...

Hmm....interesting, what level are you playing at? At first level with 6 players we've been finding fights are often over fairly quickly, usually within 3 rounds or so. This has been true even when fighting higher level challenges (but we haven't taken on a solo yet). The rounds are not going by...

Well.......not that I'm supporting different strength maximums for men and women in a RPG, but did you actually look closely at the website you linked? In every weight category, men were able to life dramatically more weight. Usually by around 60-70%, and sometimes even more then that.

Disarming is extremely powerful in 4e as it can completely prevent a monster from using many of it's powers. Kind of like silencing a wizard in 3e. I was surprised to see that the fighter power that disarms was even there in the first place, and would not want to see that become at all more common.

Also while reflex/well may on average be 2-3 lower, it's also not uncommon for a single defence of a monster to be as many as 7 points lower then his ac. If you have the ability to target multiple defences with your at wills (which warlocks and wizards certainly do) then this can be a huge...

The power has the melee keyword and no listed range. This means that all attacks that you make with it have a range equal to the range of your melee weapon (most likely 1, unless you've somehow found a light blade with reach).

Hmm, yeah wouldn't foes always move in such as way as to not draw attack of opportunity if they have the choice? I guess it's hard to judge without knowing the exact situation, but unless there was a really good reason why the monsters would have otherwise wanted to draw an AoO, using a power...

I remember we used to joke that a Lamia's touch drained gold pieces. They were completely ineffective in combat, but their touch required you to spend gold on the material components for a restoration. I won't exactly miss the 3e version, though I can understand the OP being annoyed by a...

While it is often a good idea to run away, trying to run away from an extremely fast flying creature who can go through walls and who (in the case of some incorporeals) can sense where you are through all walls and illusions is probably not a viable idea.