Disappointed in 4e

[DaveMage]

I unfortunately must confess to doing this when 2nd edition came out. I took my PHB, DMG, MM, MM2, and Fiend Folio to the local used book store and sold them all so I could afford the 2nd edition PHB.

This is the saddest thing you've ever posted!

Tragedy defined!!!! Good god, man!!!!

 

[Imban]

If a single person could do it, designers wouldn't need playtesting. They'd just need to not be "bad at reading" their own writing.

Playtesting is designed to make sure that rules that read good aren't actually bad, which is very useful but also completely different.

I'd imagine that the Warlock read perfectly good to its designer, after all, and I'd prefer to say that the "14400 spells per day!" people were doing it wrong rather than cop out and say "Well, the Warlock reads bad, but you'll find in practice that it plays good".

 

[Remathilis]

I have to take exception to this. If I drop a Scorching Burst with my 1st level wizard and catch two monsters in the radius, I'm doing potentially 2d6+8 damage, which compares very respectably with a dual bastard-sword ranger Twin Striking. Put three monsters inside the burst, and my damage potential with at-wills blows away any other class. Wizards do plenty of damage, they just don't do it all to one monster.

With regard to your other examples....

Scorching Burst is a good example of the wizard's new gig; average damage over many foes. That's ok. However, some of their powers are weak compared to what other roles get; fireball, cloudkill, meteor swarm all pale compared to some warlock or cleric powers (in a completely different role, true, but there is no other controller to compare with)

1) Want to appear to be an orc? Put on a hood, use Prestidigitation to make a few coloring changes, Ghost Sound to mimic an orc's voice, and then _roll Bluff_. Spells that serve as zero-effort problem solvers are no longer thick on the ground. Some people insist that prior editions provided the clever wizard player with endless opportunities for cunning usage of his spells to overcome challenges. This belief makes little room for the idiot wizard's player, who could also succeed just by using the spells exactly as they were written. Magic should not be the optimal solution to every problem, and 3.x was a particularly grievous offender in making this the case.

Orc was a bad example. How bout a troll. Or a gargoyle. Or a giant. Or a dragon. PHB2 delivered a method of creating such powers in 3.5 (one spell, one form, use generic statblock but your own hp) that would have worked just fine in 4e, except those powers aren't there.

2) Want to summon a skeleton to fight for you for five minutes? All right- undead bones erupt from the earth beneath your foes to rend them to pieces, the spectral arms impervious to the flailing of their victims. Just use the power block for Cloud of Daggers and refluff. You don't even have to change the damage type if you apply a little creativity- maybe Scorching Burst is a brief gate to Hell through which you drag the burning spirits of the damned to claw at your enemies. Or you want your servant to move things and manipulate objects for you? Mage Hand is your at-will cantrip.

All your doing in turning a "deal X damage and Y effect" power into "deal A damage and B effect". A skeletal warrior summoned might eat up your Economy of Actions, but he can attack, defend, pick up something, provoke OAs, open a door, block passage through a doorway, carry you on his shoulders through a field of burning rock. A re-fluffed cloud of daggers cannot do that. It can attack. That is all.

3) Dominate your foes? That's not what a wizard does. Check in when the psion turns up; I'm sure he'll have something along these lines. Magic goodness has been parceled out now, and just as the psion is not likely to have at-will mini-fireballs to throw around, neither does the wizard get fine-tuned mental control of other people. This is a drastic break from former editions. They gave the wizard "all magic" as his baliwick, and then produced subclasses that could be as good as the wizard in their specialty and inferior in just about every other way. Look at the poor 1e Illusionist- he doesn't even _get_ 8th or 9th level spells.

While I agree some of the better toys should be left for psions, beguilers, illusionists, or necromancer separate classes; the wizard's power to bluff or control his foes (for a limited time) is nearly iconic. I don't need loyal minion-making spells, I want "lets turn that guy against his foes for the combat" spells.

4) Make your foes flee from your fearful illusion? See above.

This is another "break the X damage + Y effect" system. We used to have spells that made foes flee. Or catch diseases. Or slip and slide of zero friction surfaces, etc. It seemed some spell effects could have been fixed so as not to be the deadly insta-kills they were and yet be viable (check out sleep) but many were just kicked down the road, or worse, removed all together.

I liked wizards a lot in earlier editions, and I tended to play more of them than any other class. In part, this was because martial characters were so enormously tedious in combat. In another part, it was because magical characters were so good outside of combat. Despite this, I have to agree that wizards desperately needed the nerfbat, and I've got no regrets that WotC applied it in 4e. The wizard is, in general, more limited, weaker-powered, and less capable than in 3.x. And this is a Good Thing to me.

I agree with you in theory; fighters and martial PCs needed something better than general feats to make them interesting. And wizards needed less "save-or-loose" style magic (be it against death, entrapment, or whatever) but I think they went a bit too far by turning everything into damage + effect and then making the effect a secondary consideration (mostly due to the save system making status ailments mostly inconviences). I wanted the wizard and cleric brought down a peg or two, but they appear to have gone a bit too far...

 

[dm4hire]

I'm using Dominate in the 3.x sense, and that's simply outside the wizard's baliwick. Confusion is just one of those little-taste-of-it spells that wizards get, just as I expect other wizard types will get splashes of elemental damage shtick.

Um, yeah, I remember reading several different stories in my life where the wizard used magic to control someone. Not to mention a few movies here and there. Mind control is very much an area of the wizard.

I've played over 20 sessions of 4e within the last two months and though I like it there is still a lot of things I hate about the game; most of which the OP addresses. I believe WotC dropped the ball in a few areas and agree that they seem to be fixing the game as they go instead of presenting everything in one shot. I don't remember having certain basic aspects of a character class not being present in a previous core book; I'm looking at fighter two weapon as an example. WotC's response is that they wanted to give the ranger something to make the class stand out, but the first thing that comes along is...fighter two weapon fighting!! So much for the ranger standing out.

I believe the skill list was cut to short. I'd like to see just a few more skills added in to flush out to about 20-25 skills, leaving it at that. Open up craft and perform then divide thievery into one skill focused on trap/lock aspects and another on sleight of hand. I know I can do this on my own, but I wouldn't have to if WotC didn't over simplify so much.

I'm looking forward to Pathfinder, as well as Fantasycraft, Dragon Warriors, Warriors & Warlocks, and Anima.

 

[Nikosandros]

Generally though, I would rather store books than get rid of them completely.

Storing the huge amount of books that I have is beginning to be problematic, but I have an almost pathological aversion to selling books...

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm using Dominate in the 3.x sense, and that's simply outside the wizard's baliwick. Confusion is just one of those little-taste-of-it spells that wizards get, just as I expect other wizard types will get splashes of elemental damage shtick.

I think mind control is very much a wizard type thing. My problem with Confusion specifically is that the effects do not in any way produce confusion. The uncertainty of the exact effects over the course of the duration is what made the spell fun.

 

[CardinalXimenes]

Um, yeah, I remember reading several different stories in my life where the wizard used magic to control someone. Not to mention a few movies here and there. Mind control is very much an area of the wizard.

What non-game-based fiction has a wizard who both controls people's minds and throws fireballs? I'd venture to say that the wizard who can do every sort of magic is an artifact of D&D and related gaming systems, and not anything that authors naturally gravitate towards writing. The reason for this is simple- if you've got a character who can do anything with magic, then why are they not doing everything with magic? Good authors are smart enough to avoid magical omnicompetence, which is something that not all editions of D&D have been equally adept at avoiding.

 

[ExploderWizard]

What non-game-based fiction has a wizard who both controls people's minds and throws fireballs? I'd venture to say that the wizard who can do every sort of magic is an artifact of D&D and related gaming systems, and not anything that authors naturally gravitate towards writing. The reason for this is simple- if you've got a character who can do anything with magic, then why are they not doing everything with magic? Good authors are smart enough to avoid magical omnicompetence, which is something that not all editions of D&D have been equally adept at avoiding.

I kind of agree on this point. Fighters cant take every feat or specialize in every weapon yet a wizard that can master every type of magic as a "general practioner" is ok. I think specialized wizards as a default is a good idea. It would also solve the "I can do everything " problem and make having multiple arcane casters in a party a much bigger benefit.

 

[vagabundo]

I kind of agree on this point. Fighters cant take every feat or specialize in every weapon yet a wizard that can master every type of magic as a "general practioner" is ok. I think specialized wizards as a default is a good idea. It would also solve the "I can do everything " problem and make having multiple arcane casters in a party a much bigger benefit.

The 4e wizard is mostly an Evoker anyway, so it will be interesting to see what the Arcane power book has in the way of classes.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

It wasn't JUST move and cast.

It was the fact that round by round initative heavily favoured melee.

It was the fact that spellcasters couldn't get around their spell slot limitation.

It was the fact that magic actually became easier to resist as you levelled.

It was the fact that a wizard didn't get his spell automatically.

You are right and wrong. Spells are not the issue. point 2 and 4 are not the real issues.

Point 1 and 3 well I agree with you there. I dont think caster need nerfed. I think the rules need fixed to allow melee folks movement and attack same round. And it should be a bit harder to overcome spell disruption for caster and a bit better on the saves for non casters.