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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy18" data-source="post: 3953735" data-attributes="member: 24970">Basically here's how I feel about 4e:* If it makes D&D more popular, and easier for newbies to get into the game, it's good.* I'm really interested in playing it to see how it goes and all the weird combat-related feats and abilities they've added.That said:* I mostly play clerics, druids and obscure specialist wizards (necromancers, polymorph abusers, monster-summoning conjurers) so I am disappointed (on an admittedly entirely selfish & personal level) because a lot of my favorite character builds are apparently being nerfed or eliminated from the core rules, 'cause of all the Iron Heroes~Book of Nine Swords mania sweeping the 4th edition design team. Heck, I was already bummed by all the spell changes from 3.0 to 3.5.* As a DM, I've mostly been running variant forms of D&D and 3rd-party D&D campaign settings for the last four years, so I don't have any immediate interest in switching to 4e because first things first, I JUST GOTTA RUN A "TESTAMENT" CAMPAIGN BEFORE I DIE!!! :/Another big change in 4e that I really don't like, although I can see why they did it, is the elimination of the "noob" levels. If D&D4e is divided like this:Level 1-10: HeroicLevel 11-20: ParagonLevel 21-30: EpicThen D&D3e is divided like this, informally:Level 1-3: Newbie AdventurerLevel 4-14 or so: Heroic, aka "The Sweet Spot" Level 15-20+: Chaos; Too High-Powered; Severe Ups & Downs; Weird High-Level Magic Becomes a Virtual Necessity Frankly, I like the old system. I *LIKE* the fact that D&D games must change, not just in story, but also in strategy & tactical style as you advance. You go from being hapless apprentice adventurers who may have to run from a few hobgoblins to --> heroic adventurers who are pretty dang tough --> to high-level castle-owning, teleporting, plane-shifting dudes who have all kinds of crazy powers at their command but always have to worry about getting brought down by a "finger of death" or prismatic wall or beholder's eye beam or something. To me, all of these involve different styles of play and have their own advantages and disadvantages. I reluctantly understand why Wizards eliminated the "noob" levels, because frankly, it's true, whenever I play D&D with someone who hasn't played before, they're always all sayin' stuff like "What?!? I only have 10 hit points?!?" and "What?!? I can only use magic missile 4 times per day?!?" To me, it feels like power creep as everyone wants to play a tougher and tougher and tougher and more "Mary Sue" hero, but then I feel like an old geezer omplaining "Kids these days... In my day we died at zero hit pionts and we all got melted by gelatinous cubes at 1st level and we LIKED it! 'Cause there were no other kinds of RPGs to play!" @_@Regardless, though, I do hope the 4e rules are written to be able to support (expect?) a different type of tabletop experience based on the characters' level. What I don't want is for the 1st level party to be fighting gnolls and lizard men with exactly the same strategy and general feel as the 25th level party fighting mariliths and baatezu, only with all the numbers bumped up, i.e. +30 to hit instead of +4 to hit.I suppose this is something the individual DM can bring to the table, but I did grow to enjoy the different expectations that different levels of Pre-4e D&D carried with them -- i.e. Levels 1-3, "You Are Young, Grasshopper, So You Must Be Cautious", Levels 4-14, "Yeah!! Now you're real heroes! Rock on!" and Levels 15+, "Watch as I pull off this insane stunt! Now watch as the monster does this even more insane thing! Agggghhhh! This is Frickin' Chaos!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Jason</blockquote>

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