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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 3790352" data-attributes="member: 18549">You know, they've said that the whole "character roles" thing is mostly a tool for newbies by which they can say "you're a wizard?  Well, here's what you're good at.  Fighter?  You're good at this other thing," so that they know what to expect.  I also don't really think that they've eliminated weaknesses.  Wizards are probably not wearing much in the way of plate mail, and they probably also don't have the HP of a fighter.  Fighters are probably not that great at teleporting around or attacking twelve enemies at once.  I'm also not seeing why having characters that don't necessarily need a cleric in the group to survive makes the "social dynamic" any different.  I expect that you will still need to operate as a party to survive, and I never put much stock in the standard four-member all-bases-covered party in 3.x anyway.  It certainly wasn't necessary then.  I don't see why it should be made necessary now.  If anything, being able to choose a character without worrying about who else is in the party makes it so that you end up with a mixed bag, and you must work out the strategies for that particular combination.Also, I'm not seeing much that indicates the level of freedom to design characters, in either direction.  There have been a few things.  First, fighters can customize their abilities based on what weapon they specialize in.  Second, wizards have implements and traditions to mix & match.  That's really all I can remember seeing so far, and if you throw feats on top of that you have quite a lot of customization for those two classes.  I expect that we'll see something similar in most of the classes.  I think that customization is one of the priorities of class design, based on what they've said and what I've seen.As for encounter design...in 3.x the encounters were supposed to be balanced for the party level, so I don't see how that's a major change, except that they're describing what looks like a more forgiving system.  So you may, in fact, have an easier time of challenging a party for many levels on the same monster.  It might actually be a simpler task of putting together a goblinoid-focused campaign, if only because it's not so important to stick class levels on them in order to beef them up once the party has gone through the goblin-hobgoblin-bugbear trajectory.I've been trying to stay out of this thread as much as possible, just to see what people have to say, but I have to wonder if some people have been reading the same previews as I have.  While I don't think everything that's coming is super great (eg. PHB tieflings), I do think that most of the concerns above have actually been answered by the articles presented so far and supplementary comments on those articles.  However, I keep seeing the same complaints over and over again.I can understand a lot of the negative feedback.  However, it seems weird when people complain about things they imagine might be in the game, on the chance that it'll turn out to contain elements that they are afraid it might contain, but there is no real basis for imagining that it'll contain those elements.  It's also weird when people complain about potential problems that have been specifically mentioned as things the designers are trying to fix or avoid.  I'll give 4E's detractors their criticisms of the fluff changes, the spellcasting mechanics, PHB races and classes, action points, the changes to saving throws, or a bunch of other things that might be good or might be bad, depending on who you ask.  But so much of the criticism amounts to "I'm afraid it'll be bad, so I condemn the changes," that it's getting a little tired.edit: Also, do you really, seriously believe that 4E will eliminate "the challenging encounter"?</blockquote>

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