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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7751185" data-attributes="member: 996">To existing players deeply invested, yes.  New players, not at all. And that's how it always seemed to play out, too, IMX.  New players would understand and take to the game easily, those jarred by it's changes wouldn't just complain about the changes, they'd find faults that weren't there, or complain about issues the game had always had.The disequilibrium of coping with so many changes, even if they were uniformly for the better,  also opens your eyes to issues you've grown comfortable in ignoring.It's uncomfortably analogous to process of social change. That's gotta be the least of it.  Maybe if you were good at the mental arithmetic of optimal power attacking you could drag your fighter into Tier 4, able to solidly excel in one area. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It was the casters, particularly the Tier 1s, that suffered from the greatest complexity in 3.x, of course.  On top of build complexity & a little more varied uses of mental arithmetic, there was the vast pool of spells to optimally prep every day & optimally cast as meeded... I guess you weren't the one using a white board to track spell durrations.  And, as much credit as we gave 4e for tactical depth in a given turn (and as much grief as that got for slow turn cycles), 3e (and often earlier eds) tended to front load those considerations in planning sessions and pre-casting - until an effect got dispelled or anything else unexpected happened,  then the responsible caster needed to reevaluate and think about his next turn tactically. It was another if the many changes.  Yes, 4e eliminated more than half the conditions, and far more than half the named bonuses, and that was a simplifying consolidation, but it also put daily resources and at least the option of applying effects (depending on build) to every character class & concept.   Ive run for a lot of new players over the decades, and a lot if casuals since Encounters (IMX, 'casual player' just wasn't a thing for about 20 years prior to that), and they'll just naturally attack different targets, no matter how simple and obvious focus fire may be, it's not intuitive it's a result of the way hps model damage.So, yeah, there's a sophomore stage of tactical savvy where dueling marks might be a tad problematic (and overlapping defender auras worse), until you think to talk to each other, before and after that, though it's a pretty decent 'aggro' mechanic, even the aura version. D&D started as a wargames and kept characteristics thereof, throughout. Probably one if those negative qualities habitually ignored until 'in your face' changes re-eopen your eyes to it.Turns go faster in 5e, yes.  Heck most turns probably went faster in 3e, even though, IMX, you could easily fit as many combats into a session. Some classes just traditiomlly have fewer and faster to resolve actions available to them.  An attack roll can be over in seconds if the choice or target is fixed (melee type in a 'static' combat), and the attack roll obviously low.  That's a very fast turn. That could happen in 4e, as well, but everyone had the option to do something more, of they'd chosen a power at level-up that had more to it, and used it. Other classes could traditionally have much more involved turns, casters could, by mid level 3e have more slot/wand/scroll buttons to choose from than any 30th level 4e character.So one thing going on was that casters were getting less time on their turns, and had a longer wait for their turns to come up again.  And, with anyone able to take a more involved turn, if they wanted to, a lot did.  OTOH, a lot if the decision complexity of a traditional, especially a 3e Tier 1, caster could be front-loaded before the fight. Picking spells for the day after gathering as much information as possible, scrying, planning, pre-casting, etc.That was very much the experience I had when first switching to 4e.  Our group had played 3.0/5 for the full run, and had always been able to get 3 combats into a session, pretty consistently.  4e came along and we started noticing that turns took longer and rounds longer to come back around. We also noticed that, in some combats the monsters would 'die too soon,' before some cool gambit or combo could be completed.But, strangely, we were still doing 3 combats per session.  The most evident reason was rules - in 3e we were always looking up, parsing and, debating rules.  In 4e we still looked up rules (no giant DDI character sheets, yet), but they were clear, and didn't often need to be looked up again, let alone debated.  But, the other thing was that there was less 'analysis paralysis' before combat: the wizard only prepped a few spells, picking from 3 alternatives per slot, at the start of the day, the cleric & paladin didn't need to, at all.  There was no pre-cast buff-layering, no rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock of prepping & planning & making/buying...</blockquote>

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