Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
Sure, character creation can be fun when you are spending that much effort on a character who is going to be in the game for the next couple of months, when you are planning on controlling his every move during that time. When I am making Palace Guard number 25 whose job it is to be an interesting encounter for my overpowered group of level 10 players and who will die in 2 rounds, I certainly don't want to spend the effort. I want to be able to pull a guard's stats out of a book or modify existing stats within a couple of minutes to be at the right power for my group.Speak for yourself - I love character creation. Getting a rough idea in my head of what I want my character to be like, and taking the classes/feats/skills that equate to that. Or the opposite - choosing a class and saying "This class is what my character will revolve around" and building it up.
Then you don't understand what symmetry means. It is about each side having its opposite. Symmetry means that if you have a creature and it is good. Well, in order to fulfill the need for symmetry, you need to create a neutral and evil version of that same creature. If you have a plane that is for good creatures, you need an equal plane for evil creatures. If you have a meeting of the fire and water planes, you need to have a steam plane."Needless symmetry" as a comment doesn't work when your game cannot function without it's Powers system, or it's "Only four types of classes allowed EVER" mandate. You have just as much needless symmetry. It's just now somewhere else. Also, 4e decided to throw coherent world building to the graveyard instead, sadly enough.
Arbitrary numbers like "There are 4 types of classes" are not symmetry. Classes have powers are not symmetry. And some symmetry is good. It's when you find the need to fill in a chart for no reason other than the chart feels better filled in than with spaces is needless. There doesn't need to be "embodiments" of all 9 alignments. There doesn't need to be a plane for every alignment. There doesn't need to be a type of elf for every terrain type.
ProfessorCirno;4415683 This DM will take 3.5 any day. 4e said:I admit that it does when you play with certain types of players. My normal home group finds 4e runs much smoother. They follow and accept rules as written. They use the powers written on their character sheets and choose the options written in the combat chapter. And the options in the book in 4e run much smoother than the ones in the 3e book.
I have another group that has one player who wants everything to make 100% sense all the time. They want to know WHY they can't charge and use a power at the same time. They want to know WHY they can't trip someone with the same attack that stuns the enemy. They won't accept that the answer is simply: "It's less confusing to keep track of less options in a game and it prevents you from being overpowered" like the other people I know will. All of them recognize that a game will never be 100% realistic and that if a game was, it would be no fun due to how unfair it would be.
For that player, they hate 4e because they keep having to restrict themselves to the options in the book instead of it being really open. For most rules oriented players, they like it better because their abilities make sense to them in terms of how they work in the rules.