My take.

[themilkman]

Do we know that breaking line of effect doesn't break a mark as well?

The GMs in my LFR preview games said that marks were only broken when the encounter ended, you used the same power to mark another creature, someone else marked the same creature, the creature died, or you died. Even going unconscious or near-death was not enough to undo a mark.

Line of sight and line of effect were flagrantly broken by our cowardly (but tactically-clever) Paladin on multiple occasions, and the mark stayed in place.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

It's that in 4E, there is no such thing as a non-lethal injury at all - abstract or otherwise. Per the mechanics, all wounds are either superficial or else lethal. I think that is what people are objecting to.

Exactly. From what we know so far (I would stop using that language, but as soon as I do, someone will come back with "you haven't seen the whole system yet!"), there's absolutely no middle ground in 4E. You can be knocked down to 1 HP away from death, and six hours later you are literally as good as new. 1 HP is the dividing line between "not hurt in the slightest" and "dead."

People can talk about abstract HP and compare this to previous editions all you want ... but this is new to 4E. In previous editions, if you were 1 HP from death, you needed either magical healing or significant time to fully recover. In 1E and 2E it could be weeks. In 3E it was usually days. As I said before, "days, good as new" I can accept; "six hours, good as new" I just can't.

 

[outsider]

The GMs in my LFR preview games said that marks were only broken when the encounter ended, you used the same power to mark another creature, someone else marked the same creature, the creature died, or you died. Even going unconscious or near-death was not enough to undo a mark.

Line of sight and line of effect were flagrantly broken by our cowardly (but tactically-clever) Paladin on multiple occasions, and the mark stayed in place.

Interesting. I don't have a good in character explanation for that one. Depends on the flavor they attach to marking though. It's possible there's something I'm not thinking of. It's also possible they just said "It just makes for a better game", which is good enough for me.

 

[Baron Opal]

One of the more defining things about characters isn't what they're good at, it's what they aren't. It encourages teamwork. It makes people cooperate to balance each other's shortcomings. But in a system like this one, where everyone will excel at every endeavor, that becomes much less important.

With my experience with SWSE, this is not the case. All heroic characters are competent in every skill and excel in a select few. Everyone can ford the stream, but only the swimmers can reach the wreck. Everyone has a chance to sneak past the bored guard, but only the rogues can slip inside the audience chamber.

 

[Derro]

You realize, of course, that you are demanding 'believability' in a fantasy role playing game? To me, it seems as if you are attempting to justify your decision to dislike 4e based on a portion of the game, rather than wait and turn a critical eye to its entirety.

(Emphasis mine)

Oh, man.

Can't... breathe... choking... on... own... disbelief.

The demand for believability has nothing to do with the kind of game you are playing. The demand for believability has to do with what is plausible within the confines of the setting. If something breaks that plausibility it breaks the whole suspension of disbelief and ruins the game play experience.

To address the OP. I wouldn't be too concerned with the role-playing elements of the game being removed or having a reduced presence. Examine, if you will, the 3.x model of ruled role-playing. What do you have? Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather Information, Intimidate, Perform, Sense Motive, and arguably Speak Language. Then there are feats and spells that improve or alter your results gained with these skills.

As far as I can see there are all of these things in one form or another in 4e. I imagine that the "social combat system" will have plenty of special abilities for talky rogues, uppity wizards and what have you.

I mean really the role-playing aspect of any games is little more than play acting anyway.

Ex:

Player: I threaten the punk with my dagger and get him to tell me where his boss is.
GM: Make an Intimidate check against his social defense.

or

Player: Listen, dog, this is 18 inches of Cimmerian steel. It could take a man's head clean off. You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk? Well do ya? Now spill your guts before I do it for you. Where's your boss?
GM: Make an Intimidate check against his social defense. I'll give you a +2 circumstance bonus for the speech.

I don't see how the system would alter the presentation or outcome of either scenario. Now if your concern is that the system will reduce social interaction to little more than competitive dice rolling then your that would be more valid. But that is where the GM and players hold their fates in their own hands. Those dice are going to be rolled either way. What happens pre- and post- system is the where the RP is.

Good and bad role-playing happen. Whatever system you are playing the opportunities are there.

As far as the hit point/mook/healing surge issues are concerned I can't really comment without actually seeing this stuff implemented. Personally I like mook rules. It's cinematic which is good. Unless you want to play a gritty game. And that brings me to the real meat of the matter.

4e will not do gritty without substantial re-writes and adjustments of the RAW. I'm making that bold, sweeping and totally unsubstantiated statement and standing firmly by it. My reasoning is this. All of the stuff that I have seen from the development team indicates that they want a fast-playing, intuitive, butt-kicking game. That's not gritty.

I think it was stated somewhere earlier in this thread but I'll reiterate it because I think it is succinct and apt. 4e is no longer the fantasy toolkit that D&D has been for a long time. There is now a very distinct flavor tied to the core rules. That is not the D&D I have been playing for 20 years. And that is the reason I won't be switching.

Edit: Wording

 

[hong]

If the interaction between house cats and commoners is obviously broken, it implies that the interaction between house cats and armored guys with swords is also broken, just in a less obvious way.

1. No.

2. The obvious solution to this problem is to have your armoured guys interact with things more interesting than housecats.

 

[Ovinnik]

4e will not do gritty without substantial re-writes and adjustments of the RAW. I'm making that bold, sweeping and totally unsubstantiated statement and standing firmly by it. My reasoning is this. All of the stuff that I have seen from the development team indicates that they want a fast-playing, intuitive, butt-kicking game. That's not gritty.

I think it was stated somewhere earlier in this thread but I'll reiterate it because I think it is succinct and apt. 4e is no longer the fantasy toolkit that D&D has been for a long time. There is now a very distinct flavor tied to the core rules. That is not the D&D I have been playing for 20 years. And that is the reason I won't be switching.

I agree with the first point, 4e is certainly not 'gritty', and I see no easy way to make it so. However, I don't think previous editions did 'gritty' very well either, except at rather low levels. Especially once characters start getting 3rd+ level spells any grittiness goes right out the window. I also think D&D as a toolkit game never worked very well, and they're finally just admitting to that fact. If you want a gritty game, or if you want a 'fantasy toolkit', there are some much better choices out there, and that goes for all editions of D&D. If I want that (and I often do), then I'll use one of the systems which does it better.

 

[hong]

I totally disagree. My Wizard with levitate, fly, etc has no reason whatsoever to learn how to climb or jump. Heck, even before I had those spells, I would just have the fighter carry me up slopes. Which brings up another big issue I have with this skill system. One of the more defining things about characters isn't what they're good at, it's what they aren't. It encourages teamwork. It makes people cooperate to balance each other's shortcomings. But in a system like this one, where everyone will excel at every endeavor, that becomes much less important.

Skill specialising like this does nothing to encourage teamwork. What it does is force the group, at the build stage, to ensure all the bases are covered in terms of necessary skills; and give players who play specialists a way of contrasting their characters with the others. Fred is the fighter, Joe has Knowledge (Arcana), Mary has Disable Device, etc. Now I guess you could call this "teamwork" in that the players have to coordinate their chargen efforts, but when it actually comes to rolling dice and interacting with the DM and the game world? Not so much.

 

[Celebrim]

1. No.

2. The obvious solution to this problem is to have your armoured guys interact with things more interesting than housecats.

1. Yes.

2. It doesn't matter what you call them. In this case, the fluff 'housecat' only serves to emphasis how badly the interactions between creatures of different scales are modeled - and in particular how badly D&D handles the problem of small size with 'less than one HD'. Third edition introduced some explicit size rules, and some suggestions for assigning attributes to creatures of different scales that someone improved the situation compared to previous editions, but the fact that reasonably good stats cannot be created for a housecat proves the general problem still exists. It doesn't matter if I call the creature a gremlin, an imp, a kobold, a leprechuan, a bat, a rat, a coyote, a hellkite, a grue, a frob, a xyzzy, or anything else. Painting over the problem with a fluff where people don't have prior expectations of how the interaction works based on experience disguises the problem somewhat, but doesn't fix it.

3. Ironicly, the small creatures problem is one of the few versimilitude problems that 4E does in fact provide a potential solution to. It is one of the few areas of 4E design I'm likely to port into my 3.X games, albiet in a somewhat altered form. (I haven't settled on a final design only because the solution raises other 'casual realism' concerns.)

 

[hong]

1. Yes.

No.

2. It doesn't matter what you call them. In this case, the fluff 'housecat' only serves to emphasis how badly the interactions between creatures of different scales are modeled - and in particular how badly D&D handles the problem of small size with 'less than one HD'.

The obvious solution to this problem is to have your armoured guys interact with things more interesting than creatures of small size with less than 1 HD.

Painting over the problem with a fluff where people don't have prior expectations of how the interaction works based on experience disguises the problem somewhat, but doesn't fix it.

If the problem is no longer experienced, then it is fixed.