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Message: <blockquote data-quote="STARP_Social_Officer" data-source="post: 4377556" data-attributes="member: 41202">Despite some level of skepticism, my group played our first 4E game today - a prepublished module for 1st-levels. I know there's been a lot of "edition wars" going on, but please note this is not me taking sides - I simply wanted to point out what I thought was good and what I didn't as a discussion starter.What I Liked:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rituals make a kind of sense. Raising the dead shouldn't be something you can do ten times a day, and it adds a sense of the extraordinary that certain things that used to be spells deserve.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Critical hits do maximum damage. Under 3.5, you could still roll a '1' on your crit damage and do all of 2 points. Nice fix - crits should hurt.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A high armour class is easier to get at 1st level. Nice.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The essential mechanics, such as the d20 system, skill checks, Difficulty Classes, AC, Initiative etc. haven't changed, at least not in any significant way.</li> </ul>What I Didn't Like (a longer list)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wizards have been seriously neutered. With this 'daily powers', 'encounter powers', 'powers at will' system, one of the major advantages of the wizard - versatility - has been seriously curtailed. No longer can a wizard have a spellbook containing hundreds of useful spells and swap-and-change them for specific tasks - a sort of weapons package if you like. That was the great advantage of wizards over sorcerers in 3.5 - you chose either versatility or firepower.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Paths make no sense and are very constricting. They essentially force characters to conform to an archtype. I have always denied that classes do this, but paths sure do. There are other types of wizards besides war wizards and control wizards. Some wizards should be able to be just...wizards.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The classes don't cover what they ought to. I don't really miss the monk, but bards are sorely mourned. Warlords just don't fill the same role - in fact, I don't really see what the warlord brings to the game that a fighter couldn't.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Similarly, some of the races were poorly chosen. While I miss gnomes, my major gripes are the inclusion of the eladrins and the dragonborn. Eladrin are basically super-elves, and dragonborn just seem a tad too exotic to be a real player race.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Monsters seem way overpowered. At 1st level, we were fighting kobolds with 36 hit points. That's WAY too high, especially since we aren't really doing any more damage than we would under the old rules.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The whole thing plays like a video game. It seems like it's been designed to feel that way as well, to the point that while we were playing we kept asking our DM if we could 'save game' and at one point I cracked the group up when a player asked "how do I use this skill" and I answered "hold down B and press up." If I want to go play a video game, I'll go play one.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There isn't enough to distinguish one character from another. Everybody's basically the same. There's not enough options to customise and vary your character.</li> </ul>There. That's my good vs bad. Basically, I'm not wild about the new rules. Rather than play 4E permanently, I might add the elements I like to the 3.5 rules and create a home-built "Edition 3.75". But it's early days. It may grow on me.Though I doubt it.</blockquote>

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