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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rogue Agent" data-source="post: 5760339" data-attributes="member: 6673496">This is a really important point, too: 4E not only changed a bunch of stuff, it also intensely focused itself on a narrow band of D&D's former gameplay.This, BTW, isn't a secret: It was an explicit design goal. The designers referred to that narrow band as "the sweet spot". If it actually was your sweet spot, then you were a lot more likely to (a) make the switch to 4E and (b) not notice the changes.If it wasn't your sweet spot -- or if you liked the range of gameplay experiences former editions provided -- then 4E presented major problems.Also true. The shift in design ethos at WotC was apparent for several years before 4E actually arrived. And a lot of 4E stuff was being tested in late-3E supplements. (This also isn't a secret: It's openly discussed by 4E designers.)Notably, there were warning signs. I didn't really tune into them, either, so I can necessarily blame the WotC designers for not noticing, either. But if you go back in the archives at ENWorld and RPGNet and other places around the net, you can see the same objections cropping up to those late-3E products that would eventually be directly fully at 4E. Usually by the exact same people.As you note, though, it's not like 3E introduced a whole new mechanic. What they did was drop the horribly broken multiclassing rules, patch-up the dual-classing rules, and then applied them to everybody.People had been doing that for years in their house rules. (Some went the other direction and applied multiclassing to everybody. But either way, it was just part of the larger pattern at every AD&D table I ever played at to eliminate a lot of the "wacky" racial restrictions in AD&D.)Well, again, I just don't find this to be true (in the meaningful sense of conversion and actual play at the table; if you just mean that the stat blocks look different, then that's true). With the exception of broken multiclassed characters in AD&D, converting characters from AD&D to 3E is really, really easy (and you end up with a character who can do everything your old character can do). And converting adventures is literally a matter of opening the Monster Manual and using the new stats.Well, yes. If you start extensively rewriting 4E to make it look more like 3E, it will look more like 3E. Duh.</blockquote>

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