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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voss" data-source="post: 4256963" data-attributes="member: 57593">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.</blockquote>

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