D&D 4E 4E Liker - anything you worry about?

[shadowguidex]

Fears:

1) My players are notoriously bad at reading their spells and implementing them correctly. I'm afraid that with each player having many abilities, that some will be miss-played and I won't catch the error until we've been playing improperly for a year - this is the one place I see where 3.5 has an advantage - I know it inside and out at this point and our games now run like clockwork.

2) Conditions to track. My players frequently forget about Bless, Haste, Inspire, etc and need to be reminded constantly. I'm afraid with minor bonuses or penalties affecting people far more frequently, that they will get totally lost.

3) My group will consist of six players, and I'm concerned that encounters will become mass confusion of movement and effects and that I'll get overwhelmed with the minute details of the fight and will be unable to anticipate the characters actions and therefore I won't details the combats as well as is possible, where with 3.5 I know that the Fighter, Paladin, and Barbarian have very limited choices in any given round that I can anticipate easily. To sum up: 4.0E will test my ability to write exciting encounters that can remain somewhat scripted in what I want to achieve.

4) My players won't use their entire character's potential.

 

[SSquirrel]

My only fear is that this time around I will be giving a LOT more of my money to WotC. I have the core set pre-ordered w/amazon and debating buying a PHB for my wife on the 6th so we can both look on that first day. The settings they have listed are all settings I really like (except Greyhawk, always seemed dull to me) and buying just 3 books is no problem. Heck, I can see myself even buying all 3 Greyhawk books just to have them and steal ideas.

I bought the initial 3 books of 3E and the Manual of the Planes. Picked up the first 5 splatbooks (Sword & Fist etc), and Oriental Adventures. Coupla FR books and that was pretty much all the WotC I bought. Underwhelmed by several of the books plus a fluctuating period of gaming meant I spent a lot less money on gaming...or I was busy buying Monte's products

I see myself buying a lot more this time tho.

 

[That One Guy]

This is really long for how pro-4e I am... I seriously try to pimp it to everyone.

-Fear: Intelligence won't be as important.
-Fear: That there won't be a useful/non-feat way to gain more skills known (I was big into skills... possibly laughably so).
-Fear: I won't have a new group to play w/ when I move in a few months.
-Fear: Saves for low level characters versus epic characters will be okay on a 10+. (I think I'd house rule that tiers give lower tiers -3 on saves/tier. Paragon to hero -3. Epic to hero, -6... but I'd rather have it hard-wired into the rules)
-Fear: Utility powers will not be useful, varied, enough of them, or useful in noncombat situations.
-Fear: Skill Challenges won't be as fun for my players as they were for me when I played the demo.
-Fear: Feystep doesn't require some sort of line-of-sight to where one is going. I just sort of assumed one would need it... but if not... master thief, anyone?
-Fear: That if I do try DDI w/ my friends, that it won't be fun at all. I'm not looking for it to be as good as face to face... but I just don't want it to suck.
-Fear: That crafting skills will be lame.
-Fear: It'll be impossible (or so extremely difficult that I don't try) to run sessions w/ characters who are pre-heroic. (I'm a fan of flash-back and pre-game ...games)
-Fear: In a few years they'll "Give up" and just make over-powered classes who have no balance w/ the original PHB.
-Fear: That the sample characters in the books will be lame. It may seem odd, but as much as I like my tons of sweet options, there are sometimes when people don't want to spend a few hours creating level X character and just want to play. But, there wasn't anything like that for a lot of books and even then the ...'build's?... weren't what I'd suggest to my players.
-Fear: That they'll just throw half-orcs and gnomes into PHBII. Wouldn't that be lol-tastic? ...I'm sure playable gnomes and half-orcs'll show up sometime, but if they're in the PHBII it'll really feel like leftovers from the PHB... which is a fear I'm generally less scared of.
-Fear: That buffing attacks won't be able to be just buffs. Easily house-ruled to prevent a need for bag-o-rats... but still.

To clarify a fear I'm less afraid of... The reason for the PHBII. If every class is getting a chapter in the PHB, then there is really no way they could've crammed everything good in. So... it makes sense. I just hope that the PHBII is full (has a lot of useful things) and good (well thought out and organized), and isn't just, "What we couldn't fit into the PHB goes here!" ...which is what it felt like until I found out about the whole... chapter/class thing. Also, I'm afraid that... PHBII won't have the 'Wow, every class is a class I want to play' feeling I get w/ the PHB.

-Oh yeah Fear: That people won't go along with my firm (and acquired through some forum) belief in calling squares strides.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

Fears:

1) That characters won't have enough powers (max 4 encounter powers & 4 daily powers at 30th level??). This could lead to boring tactics, as every combat starts to look like same. But mostly, I just like variety, especially in spellcasters.

2) Rituals will be expensive to cast, making it difficult to use them with any regularity.

3) Multiclassing will be very limited, ruling out certain character concepts.

4) Some powers seem boring to me. Most of them seem to be "deal damage,+ one minor effect."

 

[DandD]

Fears:
2) Rituals will be expensive to cast, making it difficult to use them with any regularity.

Hmmm. Why should this be bad?

 

[hong]

I hope there's some mechanic governing casting regularity of rituals besides just cost. I'd like to get as far away from the looting mentality as possible, and that means downplaying the importance of gp.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Actual Fear: That the social combat system won't go far enough in preventing players from using charisma as a dump stat, then using their real life high charisma to fast-talk their way out of everything. (The "Mike is good with swords in real life, but he doesn't get attack roll bonuses from it; so why should you get a bonus to social rolls because you're a smooth talker in real life?" Rule)

Semi-Serious Fear: That all I'll hear about at the release day event at my FLGS is "WotC killed *my* D&D. We never played with a battlegrid or minis! We never needed rules for Social encounters! We never used the internet to do anything related to games; I don't even have internet access! Blah blah blah!"

-TRRW

 

[Wormwood]

Semi-Serious Fear: That all I'll hear about at the release day event at my FLGS is "WotC killed *my* D&D. <snip>

That's why we need Ignore lists for Real Life.

Get on it, Science!

 

[Cirex]

Two big fears, two minor ones.

Minor:

-Getting the right setting: A few years ago I would have created a new World suited for D&D 4e but nowadays I got no time for it, so I'm planning to play at Eberron...but many things will have to be adapted...and I'm afraid that the outcome would be not good enough.

-Tracking marks and ongoing effects: As many people said, this could be troublesome for my players. The "Wait, the bard was singing? Ok, then I hit" line is just too common. I think that every player having a sheet to keep track of their own stuff will be enough.

Big:

-"3.5 was better" : If my players start with that, I will feel a bit sad. They are free to like whatever they want. I really like how 4e is going, and considering how much some of my players love B9S over the classic "Attack power, attack power, attack power" routine, it should be ok, but we will see.

-Miniatures : We only started to use miniatures last year, when I designed a mega fight against the BBEG of a long campaign and I wanted it to be perfect, so I created a seven different phases fight, with many ongoing effects all around. We liked how it worked, so I started to use the battlegrid for important fights...but I barely have any miniatures (till June at least), only the basic battlegrid (till June) and not much imagination to start using LEGO or similar things to "draw" tables, barrels, etc.
I want to play 4e with miniatures, but I think I'll need to do something to avoid having clone fights like "Ok, I think I will take that corner again, while you two cover me".

 

[Hussar]

I have two fears about rituals.

1. They will try to balance rituals with "in game" rp consequences. This NEVER works. It's like the guy who takes a character that has some sort of weakness, like "People won't like me" and then simply never interacts with anyone so his weakness doesn't come up. Balance must be mechanical and not in-game. In-game balance requires too many assumptions about the game world.

2. The whole "rituals come from scrolls or books" thing seems ... cheesy. It just rubs me the wrong way. This fear probably comes from the fact that I haven't read enough details about the rituals, but, that one thing seems icky to me.