Well, as I said in the thread about stuff we like, I feel that 4E needed another six months of polishing the crunch and tightening the fluff.
Specific things that annoy me:
1) Many of the mechanics feel bolted-on, like hasty patches. They should be streamlined and simplified to make them fit better within the overall system. Some examples:
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- The fighter's Combat Challenge should be revamped to use the opportunity attack rules, instead of being its own separate beast.
- Tracking magic item daily powers is too complicated; there are two different limiting factors on their use. Either limit the number of magic item powers you can use per day, or limit each item to use once per day, but not both. Better yet, get rid of magic item dailies altogether, or have them replace your own dailies.
- A bunch of abilities, like the ranger's Prime Shot power or the elf's Perception bonus to allies, are a nuisance to keep track of in exchange for a piddling +1. IMO, no conditional bonus should ever be less than +2.
- Bonus type used as a balancing factor. As others have said - any bonus that comes from a power should be a power bonus, any bonus that comes from a feat should be a feat bonus, and any bonus that comes from an item should be an item bonus, no exceptions, thank you, good night.
- Masterwork armor. I understand the reasoning behind this - it's to keep heavy armor from falling behind light armor as characters level up. But dear God, what a clumsy way to accomplish that! If you ask me, heavy armor should work like light armor, only keying off Str/Con instead of Dex/Int.
- Tier-based bonuses (at-will powers gaining an extra damage die at Epic tier, powers with attack bonuses that scale by tier because they don't use weapons or implements). Again, a clumsy fix to make the math come out right.
- "Feat patches" like Expertise and Paragon Defenses... yet again, math fixes. These have a bit more of an excuse since WotC had to find a way to fix the math after the fact, when it became clear that PC attacks and defenses fell behind in the upper tiers. Still, they shouldn't be necessary.
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2) Insufficient attention to making the fluff match the crunch. This takes three main forms:
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- Bad choice of terminology. Case in point: healing surges. They shouldn't be called "healing," since they aren't always healing you (e.g., the warlord's Inspiring Word). Likewise, there should be a specific term for "trading a healing surge for hit points" - the phrase "spend a healing surge without regaining hit points" should never have seen print.
- Mechanics where the fluff is obviously a half-assed attempt to justify the crunch after the fact. For example, clerical powers where you heal an ally by hitting an opponent (shouldn't that be more of a necromancer shtick?), or powers like the bard's Vicious Mockery that deal damage for no good reason.
- Mechanics where there simply isn't any fluff for the crunch, or where the fluff and crunch are completely unrelated. A lot of feats, class abilities, and magic items are like this.
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3) Balance and general design problems. Others have listed most of these; V-shaped classes, grind at higher levels, minions being too weak for their XP value and too easily killed with auto-damage, warlock suckage, et cetera. WotC seems to be fixing a lot of this stuff in their more recent releases.
4) Magic items and the game economy are just a train wreck:
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- Prices inflate at ludicrous speed (apparently lightspeed was too slow) as the PCs gain levels. This makes it impossible to price anything that doesn't fit into the "+X item" model. Look at the way the cost of a raise dead ritual scales by tier. They had to do that because otherwise characters at Paragon and Epic tier could resurrect each other essentially for free. And God forbid you want to set prices for things like castles and strongholds. Either no one short of Epic level can afford a stronghold, or Epic-level characters trade them like baseball cards.
- As previously mentioned, magic item daily powers are a mess.
- The magic item section of any book is a gigantic list of tiny statblocks. Instead of a moderate number of fairly versatile items, we have a bazillion uber-specialized items, and paging through them in search of stuff that fits a given character is about as much fun as reading the dictionary.
- The age-old problem of "my favorite sword is relegated to backup status because it's +1 and I just found a +3" is still around.
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(Much of this, along with a lot of the math issues, could be fixed by scrapping the old "+X item" sacred cow.)
5) I hate the artistic style they picked for 4E. I don't generally buy into the "4E is WoW" meme, but I have to admit that most 4E art reminds me an awful lot of the cartoony, over-muscled, neon-colored Warcraft style (which I think was itself lifted from Warhammer). I dream of a day when the feet of human males can be distinguished from those of trees, the difference between "shoulder pad" and "helipad" is readily apparent, and neither breasts nor fists exceed the size of their owners' heads.
6) Two unrelated words smashed together do not constitute a creative and evocative name. Furthermore, "war" and "battle" are not prefixes meaning "more awesome."
