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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9190411" data-attributes="member: 6877472">The thing I bring up the most is encounter/monster design.  With the online DM tools, not only did you have access to hundreds of monsters, and could easily tally up the xp value of encounters, you could adjust them easily. For an adventure in the Feywild, I had my players encounter level 11 and 12 goblins, which only required me to click on "level" to get.Powers doing exactly what they say they did did sometimes run afoul of verisimilitude, but it also meant you didn't need to go over them with a fine toothed comb to sort out what they were doing.  Too many other games give you a wall of text making it harder to sort out what something is doing.Non-Armor Defenses greatly sped up play; you use a power, you roll your attack, and a high roll means you succeed, no need to wait for the DM to make a saving throw.  A lot of players (including myself) enjoyed the aspect of feeling like your destiny was in your hands, rather than throwing out an ability and praying the DM rolls low.Most powers only effect the battle for a single turn, making it harder to "lock down" a character or NPC (save for those nasty daily powers!).  Healing surges being both a resource that didn't require you to have a Cleric and being a limit to how much one could heal per adventuring day greatly helped pacing.  That a healing surge healed for 25% hit points meant that healing was a strong action, but if you kept taking hits, you'd be rendered unable to heal, so reckless play was quickly punished.  The fact that you entered almost every battle at roughly full strength meant that encounters did not become dramatically easier/harder depending on when in the adventuring day they were encountered.Action Points coming in on milestones was a far more reliable method of giving players extra oomph to deal with tough battles than hoping the DM awards you inspiration.Characters start off able to handle more than 1-2 encounters at level 1, and you quickly feel like you're a member of your class (where other systems might make you wait a few levels to get core abilities).Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies were very cool ways to make your character feel distinct, and give them a shot in the arm of flavor.The implements of spellcasting such as wands and spellbooks actually affecting the use of your powers, instead of just being an extra source of powers is something I really enjoyed, especially when specialized implements with different advantages became available.  A Wizard who uses a Wand can feel very different from an Orb user, for example.</blockquote>

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