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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 4444532" data-attributes="member: 5868">No long-term advance planning for PC character development.I'm not sure this is true, as stat requirements almost make it more critical that you careful consider future feat and power preferences before you assign stats.  Retraining does eliminate a lot of feat planning, admittedly.No class is useless in a specific fight.Heck, yes.  Best feature of 4E IMO -- plus 4E significantly increased the importance of team tactics, which is a good feature IMO.Easier high-level PC creation. Mostly, yes.  I'd argue that it's much easier for high-level spellcasters, and much harder for high-level melee characters.Fighters are now actually interesting. 3E Fighters were interesting too, if you actually took advantage of the range of feats -- orders of magnitude better than prior edition fighters.  I'll grant that 4E fighters are now a step more interesting than even their 3E counterparts, though.Less-complex high-level spellcasters.Goodness, yes.Rituals.I like these mechanics, but I'm disappointed with the number, and the fact that rituals have essentially killed the prior "clever use of flexible spells" that you could do.  It's fun to play "101 uses for a 1st level spell" -- not quite as fun now.Skill challenges. Frankly, I see this as a mechanic that isn't unique to 4E -- easy enough to port it back to 3E (and even 2E's NWPs with some further tweaking).  The fact that they screwed up the initial SC release in the core rules still irqs me.Minions. Again, not a unique-to-4E mechanic.  Take almost any 3E monster, reduce to 1 hp = minion.Easier high-level NPC creation. Yes and no.  If you weren't anal about having every single spell, feat, and skill point accounted for, high level NPCs in 3E aren't really that hard -- you just put together those items that you need for play and wing the rest.Easier monster creation/modification. Creation, yes.  I'm not convinced that systematic modification is a strength of 4E.  Point modification is neither significantly easier or harder than before.In-depth discussion on building encounters and monster roles. I wouldn't say that the concepts are any better or worse, but certainly including the design discussion in the DMG is one of the smartest decisions made for that book, and results in a significantly more useful DMG than prior editions (where the DMG was just the place to srtore magic items).My criticisms of 4E:  Missing classes plus limited rituals/spells and magic items compared to prior editions core rules make the initial release feel incomplete; changes to the base "fluff" of D&D feel like "change for change sake" that I have to undue to match my personal vision of the game.  Finally, character creation is much more role constraining (pending the release of supplements) -- that's both a bug and a feature.</blockquote>

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