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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6061308" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think it is actually something you can vary a lot with 4e. For instance after playing for a bit so I understood the PHB and the various choices and had all the basic stuff commited to memory I could do a PC in 10-15 minutes. It depends on if you are really going for serious tweeking with stuff or are just happy with a fairly vanilla character with one or two 'interesting' extras. If you feel a need to min/max then yes, you'll spend a lot of time (or actually you'll just get a DDI sub, but that's neither here nor there). It is very true that 4e is not BECMI or some other fairly lightweight D&D of yore. OTOH a lot of 4e's options are pretty cool, so it is a fair trade IMHO.Combat is not as fast as it can be in AD&D say at low levels, that's entirely true. However, IMHO it is not a problem because you want to imagine your 4e game as something like a Steven Spielburg movie, not a tactical slugfest. If the PCs aren't running after something, running away from something, sneaking past something, or fighting in some moving, changing, burning, collapsing, crashing, trap-filled, etc etc etc place then something is wrong. 4e fights where the players slug it out to the death with monsters are (almost) always just not the way to go. Play generous with minions, always have goals or other concerns besides kill the bad guy, and definitely make maximum use of the environment. 4e SHINES in this sort of game because the characters are tough and resourceful and can make mistakes and come out the other side and and win. The DM is free to pound on the PCs and knock them the heck back on their back foot but they have the organic means to turn around and make it work anyway. Another aspect is that 4e does really well at themed groups of characters. You want a whole stealthy intrigue party? The fighter can be stealthy, the wizard can be stealthy, so can the cleric (well, best get the cleric a bit of magic help, but even so...). 3.x was fine for this too, but took more of a toll in optimization and game mastery for it. In 4e it is as easy as picking the skill you want, get it via a background or MAYBE a feat, and you're good, maybe emphasize a certain secondary ability over other possibles, but it is always doable.I think there's more out of combat stuff than people notice at first. They always notice that their PCs POWERS are mostly attack powers. That's about it for strict combat resources though. Its a lot, but feats can do both, themes, PPs, EDs, etc build a lot on your concept, then you have the big stuff, rituals, practices, skill powers, even things like boons. It is more diverse and less structured than the combat stuff, but I also like the way a lot of it is really maleable. It is easy to create a fairly holistic idea of how your character works and to build up what you can do around a concept. That was HARD in older D&D where each class pretty well fed it to you fully realized. The 4e campaigns I've run (4 total now IIRC) have been pretty heavily action-oriented gung-ho adventure, but they were always fun and the characters have been uniformly well-drawn and fun. It isn't the sort of meat-grinder dungeon crawl game of the late 70's, but I've definitely been having a lot of fun with it and 4 years has been not even close to enough time to scratch the surface of what we could do with it.</blockquote>

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