D&D 4E I'm not gonna do 4E

[Waylander]

If 4E is a tidying up of 3.5E (and by that I mean simplification) like the new edition of Star Wars appears to be, then I'll probably buy the 3 core rule books and then use my current stock of 3E/3.5E stuff which will be relatively easy to convert over.

Kind of what I did when 2E came out . . .

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Surely multiplying 3E by 3 orders of magnitude would make it 6E. Or is that E6?

Um, no. 3 cubed is 27.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

If it goes the way of Star Wars Saga Edition, I will immediately switch.

If 4th Edition goes the way of SWSE I'll burn the PHB I bought to check it out.

 

[wingsandsword]

Here is why I am not looking forward to (the eventually inevitable) 4th Edition. . .

Back in 1999 I remember a lot of people being wary of the coming of 3e, and a lot of people saying they weren't going to leave 2nd Edition behind. However, things are different now.

The AD&D 2e our gaming group (and most groups I knew) was playing was houseruled almost beyond recognition. AD&D 2e was barely meeting our needs for a fantasy RPG, it wasn't really meeting them at all, but the learning curve of learning a lesser known RPG instead combined with the rarity of players made switching impractical. A number of players had refused to switch to 2nd Edition from 1st Edition and 1e AD&D groups were still around, because to many 1e players there was no real improvement 2e offered over 1e.

The switch to 3.5 from 3.0 was mostly trivial, nowhere near as huge as the 2e to 3e shift. Mostly the changes were understandable, like eliminating front-loading in classes like Ranger (it was clear in the making of 3.0 they didn't anticipate as much multiclassing as would happen), or to fix "broken" spells.

Now, with 3.5 we have a set of rules which doesn't have any. There are tiny rules-fixes like swift actions that can be added on, but nothing worthy of a whole new edition. A large change to a new edition doesn't seem needed, it doesn't feel like it could honestly make things better.

A 4th Edition would have to be an incredible game that was clearly superior to 3.5 for me to switch over.

 

[SuStel]

Suddenly it's the year 1999 again.

I'm really cautious about saying that I will or won't switch; if there's one thing that the launch of 3e taught me, it's that vocally resisting change before anyone knows what that change entails will probably make you feel foolish in the long run. I also learned that it's impossible to judge the whole from leaked reports of the parts.

I decried the previews of the third edition publicly on the TSR boards; I stand by what I said then.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I didn't switch up to 3e for a while not because I didn't want to, but because it took me a while to come to grips with things and to not kill off my goup too often as I tended to use a lot of third party d20 stuff where the CR did NOT equal what was on the printed page.

Eventually I figued out I was playing Hero with training wheels and it became much easier.

If 4th ed goes more in the flavor of point buy system, especially for stats and hit points (random hit points in a 'cutting edge system.... uh, no.), I'll look into it. Otherwise it'll be for ideas to steal for my next Fantasy Hero campaign.

 

[mhensley]

Actually I switched over to 4th edition a couple of weeks ago.

Spoiler

HackMaster 4th edition

 

[megamania]

At this point in my life I couldn't afford to buy new 3.5 books much less a new system of 4.0.

 

[thedungeondelver]

I'll be keeping a place over here on the couch for the 3e players who don't want to switch games and suddenly find themselves the victims of driveby "GOD just switch editions already!" sentiments from the 4th ed players.

 

[Razz]

A 4th Edition would have to be an incredible game that was clearly superior to 3.5 for me to switch over.

That's what would have to happen with 4E for me to even consider it.

I'd actually switch to 4E if it's as light a transition as 3.0 to 3.5E was...and if WotC helped make the conversion process for the 3E books like they did with most of the 3.0 books.