Okay people, a little wake up call.

[Byronic]

Hmm, I think this might be a possible perspective.

Some people liked having characters with an almost ridiculous amount of choice, lots of complexity etc. Some people liked having to study the books to get everything they wanted out of the character. These people could play a Wizard in 3ed

Some people really just wanted to roll some dice, swing a sword and watch things die. They did not care for the complexity.

And most importantly some people wanted to do different things with the classes. Some people wanted to play a Rogue class but no zero about finding traps. Perhaps an academic scholar or such, they could do this in 3ed. Some people might have wanted to make a painter and earn their money in between adventures by making portraits. Hell, some people even wanted to know how to lap dance.

4th ed failed the above people. A Rogue per (mechanical) definition always has Thievery and will always have the skills available to disarm traps and pick pocket people. I suppose you can just pretend you don't have the skills. I suppose you could roll your Cha + 1/2 level bonus for dancing (apparently killing all those bugbears really taught you how to "bust a move"). But this doesn't make the system a good one, it just means that you've got players and a DM who can deal with the cards they get.

I like my systems to give me options. I want complexity most people find unnecessary. I want to give my character useless skills such as "profession: librarian" so I can smirk on the inside as I make my character (mechanically) more "rounded" while I watch people min-max their character and then wonder why it isn't that much fun to play afterwards.

I'm still going to 4.0 though. There are some parts of the system I like. I like it how Wizards wouldn't ever have to use a sling in their life. I think that making min-maxing harder because everyone has the same power level is very nice.

But above those reasons I like how having experience and knowledge in at least a half a dozen systems gives me everything I need to house rule the game however I want. I just wish new DM's who start with 4.0 would know the same freedom.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

I like how having experience and knowledge in at least a half a dozen systems gives me everything I need to house rule the game however I want.

As do I. But it would be nice if this proved to be unnecessary. I'll certainly be integrating a wealth of my own material to shape the world and the manner in which the PC's relate to it, but it would be nice not to have to start tweaking the rules from the get-go.

Of course, I admit that it's entirely possible that, no matter what I find when I get the chance to crack the books next week, the game in application will be something considerably transformed from my expectations. I rather look forward to that experience, in fact.

We shall see.

 

[Pbartender]

I want to give my character useless skills such as "profession: librarian" so I can smirk on the inside as I make my character (mechanically) more "rounded" while I watch people min-max their character and then wonder why it isn't that much fun to play afterwards.

I know what you mean, but we always saw the opposite side of that coin...

Players woud want to give their characters useless skills such as "profession: librarian" so they could smirk on the inside as they make their characters (mechanically) more "rounded" while they watched people min-max their characters... And then later loudly complain and demand to make a new character, because the min-maxed Wizard could detect and disable traps better than their "well-rounded" Rogue could.

Me? I hated having to give up adventuring competence in order to gain "rounding" details. When such skills were there, I felt compelled to enforce using them. Now that they're not, I can simply say, "You used to work in a library? Great, you know everything a librarian should be expected to know. You might consider taking Arcana, History or Religion as trained skills, if you actually managed to read and learn anything from the books in the library."

I just never understood why "hobbies" and such needed actual skills to represent them.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It's been commented that the complexity in 4E comes from team tactics, instead of individual character builds. Personally, I'm happy with this. I no longer have to put up with my gaming group's Grognard yelling at my girlfriend for choosing Self Sufficient over Power Attack.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Once the game has been out for a little while power choices that are optimal for every class at every level will become apparent. The idiot that is yelling at your girlfriend will only get more support from the other players because what powers are chosen has an even greater impact on the team. The edition doesn't matter. Power gamers will always clash with roleplayers.

 

[wickederror]

I was gonna buy the book for nostalgic reasons (and for the art) and after reviewing I will wait for an art book to come out.

Oh and btw, in comparison to the wizard and how many spells he can get or if they can repeat (claiming such an act would cause some kind of broke'd-ness) was it such with the Psion as well?

I do agree after all the reading, ranting, and gnashing of teeth that 3rd had some problems. After seeing the direction Paizo is headed and reading thru the 4th books, I got my answer.

Good art though... except for the worg. WTF?

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

There's enough editions of D&D available now, that there's probably something for everyone who wants to play the game.

My personal preference remains Basic/1e as that's what I grew up with and still like best. If you like other editions more, that's obviously fine too. We should all really get along. Perhaps the only issue being, when you go to play with a new group, what flavour of D&D will they prefer?

 

[Dausuul]

And most importantly some people wanted to do different things with the classes. Some people wanted to play a Rogue class but no zero about finding traps. Perhaps an academic scholar or such, they could do this in 3ed. Some people might have wanted to make a painter and earn their money in between adventures by making portraits. Hell, some people even wanted to know how to lap dance.

4th ed failed the above people. A Rogue per (mechanical) definition always has Thievery and will always have the skills available to disarm traps and pick pocket people. I suppose you can just pretend you don't have the skills. I suppose you could roll your Cha + 1/2 level bonus for dancing (apparently killing all those bugbears really taught you how to "bust a move"). But this doesn't make the system a good one, it just means that you've got players and a DM who can deal with the cards they get.

It is emphatically not the job of the system to accommodate people who want to play "a rogue class who knows zero about finding traps." It might be the job of the system to accommodate people who want to play "a sneaky guy who knows zero about finding traps."

The system should be able to represent most reasonable character concepts, but "rogue class" is not a character concept, it's a game mechanic. If part of the definition of the rogue class mechanic is that it includes finding traps, then it's silly to expect to be able to make a rogue who can't find traps. It's equivalent to saying, "I want a guy with the Trapfinding skill who doesn't know how to find traps."

Now, since being a sneaky guy in 4E amounts to taking one skill (Stealth), having a decent Dexterity, and not wearing heavy armor, making a sneaky guy who doesn't know how to deal with traps is really not too hard. Play a ranger, for instance.

Of course, there are character concepts that you can't make in 4E. The same is true in any RPG. The question is whether enough people want those concepts to justify making rules for them. If 4E can't model a sword-and-board melee warrior out of the box, that's a problem. If 4E, out of the box, can't model a spellcasting troglodyte who uses an animated whip with a snake's head to poison his enemies? Not as much of a problem.

While I don't believe "just make it up" is acceptable as a universal answer to all complaints, there does come a point when you have to say... "just make it up." And from what I've seen, 4E does look to be very friendly to anyone who's making stuff up. To me, that's vastly preferable to 3E's attempt to include rules for everything imaginable.

I like my systems to give me options. I want complexity most people find unnecessary. I want to give my character useless skills such as "profession: librarian" so I can smirk on the inside as I make my character (mechanically) more "rounded" while I watch people min-max their character and then wonder why it isn't that much fun to play afterwards.

Now here I do agree with you to some extent. If the system requires all adventurers to be good at adventuring, that's fine by me. I don't think there has to be an option to trade out combat effectiveness for stuff like Profession. In fact, I'm just as happy that there isn't--saves me the effort of trying to second-guess the DM on whether I'm ever going to get a chance to use my Profession, or whether I should just handwave it and pick up Spellcraft. I do, however, believe there should be some mechanic for handling the things that in 2E were covered by nonweapon proficiencies or secondary skills, and that in 3E were covered by Profession and the like.

Since I am an inveterate maker-upper of rules, I intend to make something up. But not everyone likes or is able to make stuff up for this sort of thing. A 2E-style "secondary skill" system might be a good solution; you pick a background profession for your character, and then any time you try to do something related to your profession, you get a +5 to your roll, as if using a trained skill. (Obviously, you cannot use your profession for anything that's covered by an actual skill.)

Couple this with a list of professions, and examples of activities where each one would apply, and maybe some guidelines for making up new professions. I think that would cover it pretty well.

Unfortunately, this does require writing rules that explicitly call for DM judgement, and 4E seems to be allergic to that. From what I can see, the 4E approach is, "If we can't figure out a way to make a rule that's absolutely crystal clear, we don't make one at all." Which is not a bad way to go--certainly it has led them to clarify a lot of things that were impossibly vague in previous editions, like what you can and can't get someone to do under the influence of charm person. (God, the arguments I've had over that...) But it does limit them in some respects, and this is one of them.

 

[Voss]

I'm torn. Really, really torn.
On the one hand, I really dislike 3rd edition. It isn't balanced, effective, and it isn't something I'd ever want to run. I can play it, be I actually have to make an effort to not break the game, which makes it less fun. Particularly if I'm playing with people who have different ideas about what breaks the game and whether that is a good thing or not.

On the other hand, I like a lot of 4th edition. The more limited power set takes some getting used to, but overall I think its a good thing. Interesting stuff is caught by rituals and I don't even care that it takes 10 minutes to do it. Combat is, with certain exceptions, fairly well balanced and dynamic. On the downside, (and these are the combat exceptions) elite and solo monster are really badly done. They kick the system's math in the nuts and make, from all I can tell and have tried out, make for absurdly dull encounters, that feel artificially prolonged, and for two-thirds of it, characters are reduced to spamming their at-will powers.

Minions work in some places, and fail badly in others. Kobold (or whatever) minions mixed in with normal monsters? Silly and inconsistent. Ghoul minion 6 level higher than a normal ghoul? Almost works fairly well- I'm almost comfortable one-shotting something that was a challenge 6 levels ago, though damage doesn't increase at a rate that allows that to make sense. Now, stat up 10th level kobold minions to throw at an 11th level party in hordes? That works almost perfectly. I'd fully expect to one shot critters that were a challenge 10 levels ago, especially with the mechanical bonuses at 11th level. Giant rat minions? Fine and dandy. I expect even big rats to die if you stick them with a sword.

The other big disappointment is that this isn't in many ways a complete game. The paragon paths are... limited. Certain classes (and builds within certain classes, for example, the fighting cleric) get screwed over royally. Multiclassing is... iffy. In some cases you can optimize the living hell out of it, in other cases its the worst mistake you can make. And you can't even get into the opt-out-of-paragon multiclassing unless you burn the 4 feats on heroic tier multi-classing. Ouch. Very ouch.

Epic tier is absurdly minimally supported, across the board. Feats (which are particularly bad, since about a third are 'you crit with this weapon group on a 19 or 20' , 'destinies', items... its like they stopped writing material at some point. I know they were planning on doing more Player's handbooks and all... but the first one should have been complete and filled out at all levels of play.

Some of the other stuff I dislike I can live with. The monster manual, for example, has a lot of what I consider to be 'phantom fungi' type monsters. Goofy stuff that I'd never actually use. It isn't ideal for me, but I can live with that- I can accept that the game wasn't designed specifically for me.

On the whole, I like it more than I like 3rd edition. It has more options for non-casters than 1st edition, which is good. It has problems, and I personally think the elite and solo monsters break encounters whole heartedly, but I can fix them. But I am disappointed that there is a lot of material that should have been in the first book. I do dislike the idea that there just aren't enough paragon paths, rituals or epic material to really do justice to these concepts in the first book, and that I'll have to pay more money to see these basic concepts filled out properly. A couple more classes would have been nice, too. The disconnect between the slew of strength focused classes and charisma focused races leaves design space that begs to be filled out.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

The OP is right in that the same game can be played with any set of rules. The issue is finding rules that each individual finds enjoyable to play with. I like having detailed rules rather than a ruleset that is based on making things up. That is my personal preference. I may keep playing 3.x or maybe it is time to try something new like Fantasy HERO that also works with my playstyle.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It was like getting punched in the face.

Hey, it's a step up from being raped.