ainatan said:
How many times a was a cat so important to your game you needed to roll his balance check? That's what I mean.
When a sorcerer in the game had a cat familiar that she constantly sent out to spy and otherwise engage in the kind of activities where hide, move silently, and balance needed to be rolled?[1]
When a druid shapeshifts into a cat? (Or any other mundane animal?)
Etc?
There's a great deal of "We know how you play the game" to the 4e design ethos, and, really, they don't. They're going for the center of the bell curve, but it's a very flat, broad, curve, and the there might not be enough customers in the middle to make up for all the ones they're cutting off at either end.
Or, possibly more likely, players looking forward to 4e are projecting onto it the delusion that it will be "The game with all the rules for all the stuff *I* care about and none of the stuff *I* don't care about!" I suspect a number of the kitten-stabbing sect will be tearing their shirts when the real game gets here and it fails to meet their imagined ideal of perfection. But that's another thread.
[1]Please refrain from the usual reply of "Well, you don't need to roll for that! Just make it up!", which is the default reaction to any comment about missing or truncated rules in 4e. Heard it, don't accept it, don't waste our time rehashing it. KTHXBAI.