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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 4421309" data-attributes="member: 5834">Wow. Quite a few people didn't change to 4E. I haven't bought the books yet. I've been playing with friends books. After about 15 to 20 sessions, I have no intention of buying the books. I'm not into the game.4E is not my type of game system. All it did was show me that there is no perfect game system and make me wish GURPS was better supported with adventures and monster books and the like. At first I thought it was very cinematic. But after playing it for a while I found it is cinema on repeat. It's nice that characters have powers, but after they use them encounter after encounter, they don't seem so special anymore. My players use their encounter powers whether they are needed or not because they feel like they wasted them if they don't use them. There is no more sitting on a power until it is needed like when they were all dailies, now there is a push to blow off every encounter power every encounter making powers seem less special. The at will wizard powers seemed cool at first. It gave the feel of the wizard destroying a large number of minions. But now that my party fighter calls for a scorching blast right on top of him to destroy minions because the damage is negligible to him and destroys a ton of minions, those wizard powers just seem stupid and underpowered. A 3E wizard could not drop an AoE spell on top of a character (especially an empowered or maximized AoE spell) and have it do negligible damage, while at the same time destroying a ton of other monsters. You had to be an archmage for that kind of precision.The healing in 4E makes it so that every encounter is pretty easy as you rise in level. On top of all the powers that allow the expenditure of healing surges. I'm finding it pretty difficult to challenge my players with standard encounters. Minions die so quickly they rarely deal any useful damage. Overall, 4E is too easy a game past lvl 1. Maybe it will get harder once we reach higher level, but so far my group has been mowing through monsters I thought would be tougher like ghouls and ogres. This is all being done at lvl 3. Ghoul paralysis is a joke now unless they get a series of hits that stun. Immobilized? big deal. You can still attack and get a save to break the immobilization before the ghoul can stun you.Overall, I have to say the magic of 4E has worn off on me. I still like the minis and if I go back to 3E, I'll use minis this time around. It makes movement so much easier. But as far as the 4E mechanics go, the only thing I still like better than 3E about it is the ease of preparation to run adventures.As far as designing tough challenges, 4E is very limiting. I used to be able to design a strategy for a group of monsters based on the spell casters of a given group. Now the strategy is pre-determined for every monster since their capabilities are set and do not change and cannot change without me rewriting the monster. Spell lists gave alot more flexibility in encounter design. These new monsters may have some tough abilities, but those abilities are set and if they don't work the monster is done. I'm also able to get through less encounters in 4E than I did 3E. A random encounter used to take a 5 or 10 minutes. Now there aren't really any random encounters. Even small guardroom encounters take a while to fight because the player damage doesn't scale up equal to hit points. It takes a long time to go through a monsters hit points when your damage isn't increasing by very much level to level.The game is very different. Though parts are fun, I have to say I am somewhat dissatisfied with the way many things work. I truly don't like certain elements of 4E that would look stupid in a story like my fighter calling for AoE right on top of his location because it does such pathetic damage or the constant push to use every single encounter power every encounter just because you can. It just goes to show that there is no perfect game system. There probably never will be a perfect game system. I don't know how much I like 4E after having played it and I can see why quite a few people still prefer older editions.There was still the same repetition. But at least it was repetition that was somewhat more easily believed like a fighter swinging his sword over and over again or a wizard casting magic missile from a wand to save his memorized magic missile for a creature that might have SR. Now it is magic missile  or scorching burst over and over again throw in an encounter power every encounter and a daily every once in a while. The fighter uses his knock prone power every fight as though I'm reading a book where every fight the fighter is knocking someone down or back. The rogue is knocking someone down every fight. And the same repetititous actions over and over again that were I reading a book about it I would lose my mind. Before a fight was a few cuts of the sword. Now it is special actions that aren't that special because of repetition.I'm far more of a story guy. This really intereferes with my imagination's ability to think of the adventure as a story. But I probably won't be able to change. My friends are more MMORPG guys, and they like gaining powers every now and again. They have no problem with the repetitious use of "special" powers as they have become accustomed to such power useage from MMORPGs. While I despise it because it is nothing like a story.At least in 3E a fighting style was a fighting style where maneuvers were based on conditions rather than times per day. Magical powers were based on times per day, but a fighter could use his combat maneuvers whenever conditions allowed for it. Now I just watch my players blow off encounters whenever they get the chance because at the very least it spikes their damage a bit. They could care less about conditions. It sure seems alot less like a fighting style.Before I played 4E I was speaking speculatively. I was wrong about some of the speculation. But after playing 4E I have to say that it has some problems that are difficult to resolve for my imagination. I didn't care for the repetitous use of wands for healing from 3E, but I don't know that I care more for the repetitious use of powers including healing of 4E. The repetition is still there, it is just a bit different and encompasses more. Now I can't carry on a long encounter that spans several different rooms for fear of players being out of their encounter powers and healing. At least with wands and powers based on conditions, I could run varied encounters that involved one room or many rooms. Now that is not the case or I will kill the party, yet room by room seems too easy alot of the time. All in all just not a great game. I understand why so many people are resisting the change. 4E has alot of mechanical issues I can see players being displeased with. It is not even close to a perfect game system and I would say it is not even an improvement over 3E. It is just different and provides a different play experience that some will like and some won't.I think I'm going to check out Pathfinder when it drops.</blockquote>

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