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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emerikol" data-source="post: 5989807" data-attributes="member: 6698278">I could care less about cosmology.  I make my own worlds and my own cosmology each time.  (These days anyway).  I do think the Forgotten Realms fans got shafted in 4e so I'm sympathetic to them but it doesn't affect me.  I'll never run a game in Forgotten Realms.Perhaps the changes that 4e brought into the game will make it clearer.  I am basing this on initial release of Players Handbook 1 and not what it was at the end.  I think all games should be evaluated in this way.1.  Healing Surges.  - In earlier editions of D&D you interpreted the meaning of hit points how you wanted.  Healing surges forced you to interpret hit points in a particular way.  For the folks that thought that way all along it was no big deal but for everyone else it was a deal breaker.2.  Martial healing - ditto.  1 makes this a deal breaker.  The class itself if bannable wouldn't be. 3.  AEDU - All classes followed this model.  This was a massive departure from what had gone on before.   For many people this made playing any particular class feel like playing any other.   For some it didn't.  For those where it mattered it was a deal breaker.4.  Loss of Utility - Many spells were made a lot higher level or were removed completely.  While perhaps not a deal breaker over time it made the game feel not very magical.  In the end it was a deal breaker for me.5.  Rituals - While I like rituals conceptually.  This was a pretty big shift especially given how few spells wizards had utility wise afterwards and how weak those spells were.  There should have been hundreds of rituals from day one.  Also one feat to be able to get any ritual?  That pretty much devalues the whole concept for magical characters.  (note: this last bit was easily houseruled).6. Magic Items - As someone has pointed out these got better later in the edition but at the start they were massively boring compared to earlier editions.  Again I houseruled a little.7.  NPCs - When an NPC had a class in any edition prior to 4e it was that class.  The DM had the spells etc..  4e abstracted this with recharge powers etc..  Definitely a jaring approach for class based enemies.  I didn't mind monsters being different and being improvable by templates instead of by adding class levels.  Nor did I mind recharge powers for monsters.  But if I have an npc wizard I would want a wizard.  (again houseruled easily.)8.  Attitude. -  The DM went from judge and arbiter to enabler.  The say yes attitude.  Minor because it's easy to just ignore advice.  It did lead I think though to 9.  The whole attitude that is.9.  Removal of bad things.  - Level drain while poorly done in 3e at least existed.  Rust monsters too.  I remember reading the design book where someone said that bad things happening ruined the fun.  I'd say the absence of the possibility of bad things happening ruins the fun.   3e started this in some small degrees I agree.  4e though made it policy.I like the guy who said something about the engine versus the user interface. It may be an apt analogy.  3e did streamline the math.  It did organize it so that martial things applied to all martial classes.  It also did the same for magic in many ways.  It became far more systematic.  But the play experience especially if you weren't trying from day one to screw with the system, was very similar.   4e though completely changed the play experience and for me it did it for the worse.</blockquote>

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